Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes

By Salley Mavor

This hand-picked collection of classic nursery rhymes, all delicately and painstakingly illustrated by Salley Mavor, who is reknown for her incredibly detailed fabric and cloth scenes.

It took Mavor ten years to develop her own fabric relief technique to a level where she felt comfortable even considering illustrating a book. Now, Mavor embroiders and sews illustrations, each scene taking nearly a month to complete. In this book, Mavor renders a new and visionary nursery rhyme world with precision and intricacy for many a generation to treasure for years and years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780547504926

Salley Mavor

Salley Mavor rediscovered her childhood delight in sewing and creating miniature scenes while studying at RISD. “I found I could communicate ideas more clearly than with pencil or brush, that my hands would direct me in a compelling way.” Her innovative bas-relief sculptures appear in the award-winning Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes, as well as other picture books. She lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.   www.weefolkstudio.com Instagram: @salleymavor Facebook: Weefolkstudio

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Reviews for Pocketful of Posies

[jfoti-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought this was a wonderful book. I thought it was a wonderful collection of many famous and recognized nursery rhymes. This book was successful because it gathered so many notable nursery rhymes in one place, giving children a compact collection. I also found the pictures used in the book to be incredibly unique and captivating. The background of each page was a picture that reflected the events of the nursery rhyme, but the characters and settings of the picture were made out of simple objects. For example, for a nursery rhyme beginning, "Elsie Marley had grown so fine...," Elsie, her pigs, and the grass outside of her house were all made from cloth (it almost looks like wool). The presentation of these characters as these cloth figures make them almost look like puppets, making the nursery rhymes even more of an imaginative experience for children. I believe that the utilization of these materials expresses the texts in the best way possible and encourages children to use their imaginations to make the nursery rhymes come to life.

[2wondery_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quite beguiling and clever illustration method. Mavor creates her scenes with felt and thread, in flattened 3-D. It's the next stage up from stumpwork.

[pussreboots · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Salley Mavor won the Horn picture book award in 2011. It's well deserving of the award, being the mostly uniquely styled nursery rhyme collection I've ever seen.Salley Mavor sews miniature dolls, animals and other items to build the scenes for these nursery rhymes. The items used include naturally died wool, buttons, lace, beads, and sequence. The collection itself has poems and rhymes the author / illustrator remembers from her own childhood.The rhymes are a good mixture of classics and lesser known ones. There's an index that is searchable by first lines. The wide range of selected poems combined with the outstanding and unique illustrative style make this book stand out.

[shelf3employed · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Traditional nursery rhymes illustrated in "hand-sewn fabric relief collages." Most of the rhymes are familiar - old classics including Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, and the like. But a few may be so old as to be new, "I'm dusty Bill from Vinegar Hill. Never had a bath and never will."The depictions of the exquisitely detailed needlework are simply stunning. Even a child who can't appreciate the work involved will know that this book is something special.