"Johnny Crow would dig and sow, till he made a little garden"

Dear everyone,

Were you read this funny book? I think it was one of Auntie Olive's favourite. Noel scanned some pages of it for me - I suppose the original is in Bonnebosq - and I laughed again at watching the adventures of the lion, the bear, the goose (which was a goose!) and many other zany creatures which lived and busied themselves in Johnny Crow's garden!

Trouble is, he only sent me a few of the pages, so I decided to look for the complete story, so here's the whole book (click on the HTML link), first written by L. Leslie Brooke in 1903. It was made fully available on The Project Gutemberg website.

The fun of the story is the Alice Caroll-like treatment of preposterous animal habits which are all absolutely out of context, and made to submit to the whims of an ingenious rhyme-master: so for example, the only thing that could happen to the Beaver was to have a fever, and the only dance which the pig could dance was... (if you can't guess, check the book!)

And now for some "goose" documents, because there was a line in the book which gained the status of catchword, probably because there must have been some game linked with it, or a particular childish enjoyment of the fun contained in the animal...

Below is a letter where Auntie Olive reminds me of the famous line!

I also have a birthday card sent (perhaps later, it doesn't have a date) to me by Grandma. This is the front:

And the quack back:

In this letter to Paco, Auntie Olive refers to the goose again, even if I'm not sure whether it's the one in the story (but you'll enjoy her sense of humour!):

There must have been a special reference between Paco, Auntie Olive and the goose!! Check this: