New Releases by Peter Opie

First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called "the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out."

This final volume of the Opies' acclaimed trilogy deals with children's games that use equipment - such as marbles, skipping, fivestones, and ball-bouncing. They describe rules of play, the history of the game, and accompanying rhymes and chants.

This collection of essays by twenty leading scholars applauds the Opies' work in this field while exploring many topics, from the behavior of children in early modern England and the development of French fairy tales and nursery rhymes, to the work of classic authors such as Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, and J.R.R. Tolkien and some diaries and magazines written by children.

Traces the histories of singing games such as ring a ring o' roses, oranges and lemons and others, and is an exposition both of the workings of folklore, and of the perennial ways of young children when left to play on their own. Each of the 150 games is described in historical detail.

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

Contains the earliest published text of these tales.

Drawing from contributions of over 10,000 children from the streets, parks, playgrounds, and vacant lots of England, Scotland, and Wales, the Opies' classic account of the games children play provides the unwritten rules to hundreds of games, a discussion of their historic origins, and a fascinating glimpse of the child's secret world.

A collection of favorite rhymes found in folk literature and lesser known rhymes passed down in regional or family traditions.

800 rhymes. 600 illustrations.