The Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam (1969 First Edtion)

Description: Condition Continued: And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. There are a great number of photographs (visuals) by the artist Lawrence Ratzkin. They are all in excellent condition. You can see the dust jacket in the first few photos. It too is in very nice condition. I have always had the jacket in a fitted protective cover. I don't see any tears. The spine ends are in very good shape. So are the flaps. There is a tiny bit of crinkling at the top corners of each flap. The jacket is NOT price-clipped, not clipped at all. Stated First Printing, First Edition. The hardcover first edition is very rare. And this one is in excellent condition, both the dust jacket and the book.From the dust jacket: 'The ailing heart of American cities has been the subject of many books, but none more telling, none more jarring, than this gathering of nursery rhymes, altered from their classic form to dramatize the desperation of life in our urban ghettos. Never has innocence been put to more potent social use than in The Inner City Mother Goose.' At least for those who read it: the book was according to the author 'just about the most banned book in the country.' It inspired a 1971 Broadway musical called Inner City, later revived in 1982 under the title Street Dreams. 'Unassuming at first-- a slim, square volume, easily mistaken for any other collection of light children’s verse-- the book quickly declared itself a force to be reckoned with. In the six short lines of the first poem, Merriam simultaneously issued an invitation for an audience and fired a warning shot across the bow of an all-too-complacent nation: Thus, from the outset, through one direct, brutal profanity-- incidentally, the only actual swear in the entire book-- it was clear that this was a different sort of Mother Goose. From here the book proceeds relentlessly, 65 verses in all, pulling no punches as Merriam takes the reader on a street-level tour of real life in the city, an unromantic 'Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?' that includes the dope pusher, the mugger, the slumlord, the junkie, the uncaring and ineffective public school teacher, the trapped latchkey kid, and more.'

Price: 75 USD

Location: Pound Ridge, New York

End Time: 2025-02-06T04:01:54.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD