A collection of favorite rhymes found in folk literature and passed down in regional traditions

Nursery Rhymes, The Opie Book of

Children's Books

Opie, Iona

Opie, Peter

Literature & Fiction

Puffin

This volume, based on thirty years of collecting and research by two pioneers in the field of children's lore and language, presents hundreds of singing and clapping games popular with children since the Middle Ages, including such favorites as "Pop Goes the Weasel," "Lazy Mary Will You Get Up?," "Skip to My Lou," "The Muffin Man," and "Ring a Ring o' Roses." Serving as an exposition of both the workings of folklore and the perennial ways of young children left to play on their own, The Singing Game categorizes over 150 of these games into groups such as "Matchmaking," "Wedding Rings," "Cushion Dances," "Witch Dances," "Calls of Friendship," "Eccentric Circles," "Buffoonery," and "Clapping." The Opies provide a detailed, historical description of each game, as well as a vivid, firsthand account from one of its most recent practitioners on the playgrounds and backstreets throughout England. Demonstrating how the games have evolved over the years, and how they vary from country to country, this book offers a comprehensive, authoritative history of a universal folk genre. Beautifully illustrated throughout, it contains photographs, lithographs, and prints; the words to each game as well as the music for many of them; footnotes; a bibliography; a general index; and an index of songs, games, and dances.

The Singing Game

Politics & Social Sciences

Opie, the late Peter

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

Presents reproductions of a variety of early 19th-century children's books including rhymed alphabets, nursery rhymes, a pictorial grammar, limericks, and nonsense rhymes.

A Nursery Companion

Iona Opie and the late Peter Opie have devoted their lives to the study of children. Now comes the final volume of their acclaimed trilogy on children's games. Together with Children's Games in Street &amp; Playground (1969) and The Singing Game (1985), this volume completes the most comprehensive study this century. Based on thirty years of research, this intriguing volume focuses on games that use equipment of one kind or another--marbles, jump rope, balls--describing in colorful detail the objects used, the rules of play, and the accompanying rhymes and chants. The Opies examine the history of the games from their earliest appearance and they consider the wider social context, tracing the varying attitudes towards them over the past three hundred years, from pedagogical disapproval, to legal suppression, to the sentimental nostalgia of the present. Here then is the world of play, the imaginary space into which our young ones escape each day. Children's Games With Things is an evocation of this imaginary world as well as a reminder of our own past.

Children's Games with Things: Marbles, Fivestones, Throwing and Catching, Gambling, Hopscotch, Chucking and Pitching, Ball-Bouncing, Skipping, Tops and Tipcat

Sports & Outdoors

An account of the games which children between the ages of six and twelve invent or perform out-of-doors for their own enjoyment

Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking, Hunting, Racing, Dueling, Exerting, Daring, Guessing, Acting, and Pretending. (Oxford Paperbacks)

In 1959, Iona and Peter Opie published the first of their major studies of the games and customs of children. The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, the first book to uncover and thoroughly explore "the curious lore passing between children between 6-14," was based on contributions by 5,000 children from different parts of England, Scotland, and Wales. A delightful collection of the riddles, epithets, jokes, quips, jeers, pranks, codes, superstitions, beliefs, and rites of schoolchildren, it also includes fascinating historical annotation and comparative material, by which the Opies illuminate the extraordinary continuity of children's beliefs and customs.

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford Paperbacks)

Reference

The Singing Game (Oxford Paperbacks)

For nearly forty years Iona Opie worked with her husband, Peter, on a notable series of books on the traditional lore of childhood, among them Children's Games in Street and Playground, The Singing Game, and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. As part of her fieldwork, she visited a local school playground every week, where she would write down events exactly as they happened, and conversations exactly as they were spoken. The result of these many years of observation, The People in the Playground is a startlingly honest portrait of children at play, at once charming and hilarious, alarming and poignant, and full of infectious vitality. Here we meet the children of the Junior School playground in Liss--their favorite games, their silliest jokes, their engaging personalities. Opie provides much insight into children's play and human behavior: why crazes begin and stop so suddenly; the reasons for popularity and unpopularity; the ways in which new lore arrives on the playground; the unconcerned killing in the perennial game of "War"; or the tender commiseration for a friend who has stubbed his toe. She follows individual children week by week: the bully and his victim; the intellectual who would rather read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland than join in the games himself; the girl whose tragic home life can be forgotten as she plays a ring game; or the boy who is obsessed with gorillas. A group of boys offer Opie their version of tag ("There's someone got hayfever, right? He catches another one and they get hayfever. And they get tagged by someone who's free and they're all right.") A young girl asks why Opie is writing everything down, and then presents her own rendition of "Popeye the Sailors Man" for the record. And on a rainy day unsuitable for their regular games, a vivacious child offers her very best jokes:"I'm the one who tells you jokes--ta ra! Here's another one. What's the most unfortunate letter in the alphabet? Will you write it down, please. I like you writing them down," she says to Opie and continues, "The letter U--because whenever there's trouble you always find U in the middle of it." No one has previously attempted to describe and record life in a playground while it is actually happening. In these pages are rich and startling portraits of children at play: their art of storytelling, the friendships and enmities, the excited interest in sex, the diversity of characters, and above all, the hilarity which pervades the playground, creating entertainment out of trivialities.

The People in the Playground

This volume contains twenty-four of the best known fairy tales in the English language, presented here in the exact words of their first English publication or of the earliest surviving text. Including "Sleeping Beauty," "Bluebeard," "Cinderella," "Thumbelina," and "Hansel and Gretel," as well as many others, this collection provides a historical introduction for each tale and a general Introduction which traces the history of fairy tales collected in Asia and Europe long before they appeared in English.

The Classic Fairy Tales

History & Criticism

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Opie, Iona. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Opie, Iona

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Opie, Iona. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Nursery Rhymes, The Opie Book of

The Singing Game

A Nursery Companion

Children's Games with Things: Marbles, Fivestones, Throwing and Catching, Gambling, Hopscotch, Chucking and Pitching, Ball-Bouncing, Skipping, Tops and Tipcat

Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking, Hunting, Racing, Dueling, Exerting, Daring, Guessing, Acting, and Pretending. (Oxford Paperbacks)

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford Paperbacks)

The Singing Game (Oxford Paperbacks)

The People in the Playground

The Classic Fairy Tales

The People in the Playground