Little Golden Book Monday #131

Today's Little Golden Book is Baby's Mother Goose Pat-A-Cake. This copy is a seventh printing from 1971, with the original copyright being 1948. The quality of this copy is not that great, but I had never seen it before and I liked the 50's style artwork on the cover. Inside the book is a cute illustration of a cat playing a violin with this note about the artist: While this is Aurelius Battaglia's first children's book he has done murals for children's rooms and worked in the Disney Studio. He studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and now lives in New York City.
I thought it was funny that they listed his accomplishments as doing murals on children's room walls and working for Disney. It's pretty hard to decide which should come first on your resume.
Along with the cover, I have scanned a few of my favorite pages from the book, including a two page spread of Little Miss Muffet and the last page of the book, Rock-a-bye baby. I've always thought that so many of the young children's nursery rhymes and songs are kind of morbid and/or depressing. This one is a cheerful story of a little baby in a cradle stuck up in a tree, and eventually falling to the ground, bough, cradle, and all. I did learn something from this though, as I don't think I have ever included the word "bough" in the last line of the song when I have sung it. I'll have to remember to add that next time I have occasion to sing this tune.
[Ed note, here is the fun learnin' part of the blog. Bough -noun, a branch of a tree, esp. one of the larger or main branches.]

Lastly I have scanned the inside back cover and back cover of the book. The inside back cover lists the current titles for 1971 and the back cover is one I don't see very often. I love the 'eyes' in the letters GB. And by the looks of it, I would guess that the Donald Duck at the bottom left of the back cover was done by Aurelius as one of his bedroom wall illustrations.