A beautiful collection of traditional French nursery rhymes, songs, and verses, translated for young readers and illustrated throughout by Maud and Miska Petersham. Filled with colorful scenes inspired by French art, history, costume, and everyday life, this substantial 1927 volume was created to introduce children to the songs and traditions of France.
These little chansons, which take the place of nursery rhymes in France, have been beloved by generations of French children, for most of them are at least a hundred years old. They come to America, bearing the lively, varied rhythms, now gay and bounding in merriment, now sweet and tender, which can well up from no single writer, but only from the hearts of a whole people. There is more of the real France in these rhymes than in volumes of more learned books. And what a kaleidoscope of French life – shepherds and shepherdesses, now from the dainty fancy of a Watteau, now from a rugged reality of a Jules Breton, peasants and princes, citizens and villagers, plowman and sailors, lawyers and millers, carpenters and blacksmiths, duchesses and beggars! Now one wanders in shops and city squares, where dames of Pairs sweep all day; in a moment, presto! there is the countryside – flowery meadows, green fields, and forests, chateaux, thatched cottages and Gothic church spires. This is France and this is the French chanson.
