The Star Tales of Mother Goose

The Star Tales of Mother Goose, by Mary Stewart Adams, illustrated by Patricia DeLisa (2021); reviewed by Alice Groh

As the true fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm reflect human soul/spiritual strivings, so too does The Star Tales of Mother Goose reveal the layers of meaning in what we have come to regard as simple children’s verses. Out of her deep knowledge and observation of the stars, Mary Stewart Adams has made the correlation between our favorite Mother Goose rhymes and the constellations appearing in the sky during the revolving months of the year. The charming illustrations add to the delight and together they offer readers of all ages the incentive to look up, with an easy way to remember what to look for and altogether a confirmation that our imaginative world of myth and story is indeed a true bridge between the human soul and the outer, visible world. Imagine, that

Hey Diddle Diddle, The cat and the fiddle

The cow jumped over the Moon,

The little dog laughed

To see such a sport

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

truly describes what one sees in the sky: looking up at the Big Dipper as the focal point (the spoon), with the dish as the Milky Way below it, the cat (the constellation Leo) and the fiddle (the constellation Lyra) to one side and the cow (the constellation Taurus) and the little dog (Canus Minor) to the other side! (We would hope the moon would oblige by placing herself in Taurus so that the cow could jump over her.) All of this is wonderfully illustrated on pages 10 and 11 of the book and then expounded upon with stellar map again on pages 50 and 51.

Or that in the May evening sky we can observe Little Bo Peep (the constellation Boötes) looking for her sheep (the Big and Little Dippers):

Little Bo Peep has / lost her sheep / and can’t tell where / to find them.

Leave them alone, / and they’ll come home, / Wagging their tails behind them.

Little Bo Peep fell fast asleep, / and dreamt she heard them bleating, / But when she awoke, she found it a joke, / for they still were all fleeting. / Then up she took her little crook, / determin’d for to find them; / She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed, / for they’d left all their tails behind them.

The verses on pages 12 and 13 are wonderfully explained and complimented by the star maps on pages 55 and 56 where you discover the names of all the stars and constellations and where to look for them.

In between nursery rhymes and stellar maps lies a wonderful interlude tale concerning Mother Goose herself, Bertrada of Laon, “Goosefoot Bertha” due to a webbed foot, mother to the Emperor Charlemagne and the purveyor of instructive folktales to the populace, inspired from spiritually-cultivated sources.

This book is so beautifully done and instructs on so many different levels that it is easy to imagine it being a fantastic gift for families and friends of all ages. One hopes that it will also entice us sufficiently to go out and “make friends” with our starry neighbors, who patiently wait for us to notice and to love them.

Alice Grow lives in New Hampshire and handles communications for anthroposophical activities in that region.