Shortly after packing their young family off from London to a cottage in Surrey, celebrated children's literature collectors Iona and Peter Opie produced this, their first book together, in 1947. It gathers more than 170 schoolyard songs and rhymes, including taunts and teases, insult blockers, riddles, tongue twisters, jump-rope rhymes, story songs, and nonsense. Decades later, publisher Sebastian Walker made sure that Maurice Sendak received a copy of the Opies' book, with the encouragement to draw whatever the rhymes inspired. The result is this 1992 classic—a pocketable treasury of pugnacious ditties set to Sendak's boisterous miniature illustrations, for anyone who is or remembers being a child.