Iona Opie is a world-renowned researcher and writer on European folklore and children’s street culture. She worked closely with her husband Peter Opie (1918-1982), whom she met and married during World War II, until his death. Iona Opie is a world authority on children's rhymes, street & playground games and the Mother Goose tradition. Together with her husband she conducted ... Read moreprimary fieldwork, as well as library research, interviewing thousands of children. The couple were also noted anthologists. Iona has garnered resounding praise for her best-selling My Very First Mother Goose, the follow-up Here Comes Mother Goose, and Mother Goose’s Little Treasures, all illustrated by the award-winning Rosemary Wells. At the heart of these timeless volumes is the unflagging enthusiasm of Iona for her subject matter - and her own decidedly wry sense of humour. "Mother Goose will show newcomers to this world how astonishing, beautiful, capricious, dancy, eccentric, funny, goluptious, haphazard, intertwingled, joyous, kindly, loving, melodious, naughty, outrageous, pomsidillious, querimonious, romantic, silly, tremendous, unexpected, vertiginous, wonderful, x-citing, yo-heave-ho-ish, and zany it is," Iona assures. "And when we come to be grandmothers, it is just as well to be reminded of these twenty-six attributes." Show Less