I Saw Esau ISBN: 9780744521511

An uplifting and hugely entertaining collection of playground rhymes, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, leading authorities on childrens rhymes, and with artwork by perhaps the worlds most influential picture book illustrator, Maurice Sendak. In print again twenty years after it was first published, I saw Esau is a wonderful pocket book collection of over 170 playground rhymes, some of them hundreds of years old. From nonsense to riddles, retaliation rhymes to insults, the chants of schoolchildren across the centuries are revived in this joyful celebration of life and laughter. Sendaks boisterous illustrations revel in the fun, mischief and rebelliousness of childhood, and, as Iona Opie recognises in her wonderful introduction, much of the books charm comes from its sense of the extraordinary indomitable spirit of children: "In Maurice Sendaks pictures the child always wins".