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The Random House Book of Mother Goose

book by Arnold Lobel

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 29, 2025
Entity authorityQ28448723 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Random House Book of Mother Goose: a Treasury of More Than 300 Classic Nursery Rhymes is a 1986 collection of over 300 nursery rhymes by Arnold Lobel. It was republished in 1997 as The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose.

Reception

Alison Lurie, writing for The New York Times called it "an almost continuous round of noise and fun and feasting." writing "One admirable feature of this new edition of Mother Goose is its generous inclusiveness." and although "Readers of a generation raised on earlier visualizations of Mother Goose may regret some aspects of Mr. Lobel's version.", concluded "on balance this is a wonderful new edition of these classic rhymes,".

Horn Book wrote "All in all, this is an ample and robust volume, vibrant with the many human conditions that gave rise to the rhymes in the first place: quirks, incongruities, injustices, nightmares, absurdities, laughter, hopes, dreams."

Parents' Choice awarded it a gold medal and wrote "The day Mother Goose met Mr.

Editorial summary

“The Random House Book of Mother Goose” enters the record as book by Arnold Lobel. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Random, House and Book can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1997-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Random, House and Book.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The Random House Book of Mother Goose” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Random, House and Book provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q28448723. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 1997.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Random House Book of Mother Goose”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Random House Book of Mother Goose primary sources, The Random House Book of Mother Goose archive and Random research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Random House Book of Mother Goose”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Random House Book of Mother Goose” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.