She is The Lady of Lore, The Nurse of Nonsense, The Mistress of Mirth, The Countess of Confounding, and The Regina of Rhyme. Mother Goose is 300 years old, at least her spirit is. Do you know what keeps her alive? Children. Every time a child learns one of her rhymes, Mother Goose lives another day. Watch this beautiful short film with shadow puppetry by Manual Cinema to learn all about this mysterious lady of letters!
Photograph by Joe Mazza / Brave Lux
This shadow puppet play, “Who is Mother Goose?” begins with Miss Natalie and a group of children who have never heard of the “most famous poet in the English language.” What follows is a magical introduction to the celebrated lady of letters that will explain her origins and her enduring popularity for the past 300 years. Children will find out that Mother Goose doesn’t have white feathers, a long neck, and orange feet at all. Some people say she flies on the back of a goose but others believe she just pretends to because she is an excellent pretender. She’s a writer and anything is possible in the Land of Make Believe. Miss Natalie explains that “lan-gu-age” is all the words that we have to understand each other and to tell our stories, and that a “poet” is a person who loves words. Children will see Mother Goose and her gander on the deck of a ship, travelling across the big salty sea from the small island of England to share her famous book of rhymes with the rest of the world. She is welcomed and loved, simply because she is very clever and makes everyone laugh.
