Embedded Files
Musing: A Doorway
A Doorway in Verse
Remembering Bedtime Rhymes
by Clare de Lune © 2026
This book was a doorway, one of many, drawing me into its richly coloured universe. Every turn of the page brought a new burst of life, and I felt myself within it: an unseen observer, watching the scenes unfold and piecing together what had been and what may follow.
I have always loved the old Ladybird Books for that very reason. Their illustrations carried a vividness that felt almost within reach. In them, I found echoes of my own world, refracted through the enduring magic of their pages. The pictures gave me space, for my imagination to explode, and at times, to simply linger, to be still.
Bedtime Rhymes, published in 1977, was a constant favourite, not only at night, but whenever my mum would read the poems aloud to me. I could read for myself at age five, but that was never quite the same. I preferred to be transported into the world of the page by the rhythm and inflection of a voice, the words unfolding and the pictures drawing closer.
The Moon by Robert Louis Stevenson was among my favourites. “The moon has a face like the clock in the hall” – an opening simile that lent the night a quiet comfort. Even now, when I find myself looking up at the moon in the dark, I recite this line in my head.
The picture lingers with remarkable clarity: the watchful moon set in a purple sky, the reddest garden wall below, and an orange country house with a single light glowing in an upstairs window. I puzzled over the ghost-white burglar, washed in the moon’s glow – why was he so pale when the garden seemed almost luminous? And I was certain the dog, poised at the door, longed to be let in. The whole scene held a dreamlike stillness, as though time itself had slowed.
I also loved two poems by Clive Sansom. Their sense of movement carried me along as if I were part of them. In The Engine Driver, I could almost hear the distant rhythm – “jickety-can, jickety-can, I wish it were mine, I wish it were mine” – the train gathering itself before plunging into the city. I always wanted to see a viaduct after staring at the picture and I still have a facination for tall bridges now.
And in The Roundabout, the words themselves seemed to spin, lifting me into their motion: “Round and round the roundabout, down the ‘slippery stair’”. It was this rhyme that sparked my enthusiasm for fairgrounds and carousels.
There was the nonsensical, onomatopoeic Sink Song by J. A. Lindon, which I remember for its playful strangeness: “Chase the glubbery slobbery gloopery,
Round and round and round!”
It may have been about scrubbing a stubborn porridge pot but to me the scene was something else entirely. The porridge seemed to have taken on a life of its own, swelling out into the kitchen, perhaps with a mischievous dash of ‘Pow’ cleaner, while the two children cheerfully feasted on the overflow.
And then there were the endpapers – the most enchanting picture I ever saw. A darkened backdrop, trees heavy with glossy leaves, and nestled among the branches, the soft shapes of drowsing birds. I would gaze at that image for long stretches, as though it were a window of my own. I did the same in life, too, looking out across the back garden, to the great sycamore that leaned in from the neighbouring house, where an owl made its home, casting over it the same dreamlike filter.
Even small choices in childhood seemed to echo it. I always wanted the bluey-purple flat, circular boiled-sweet lollipop from the assorted bag whenever someone brought them into school for a birthday. Its colour and shape felt right, like a little edible version of the moon in that picture.
I found the book again years later, in pristine condition, at a bric-a-brac stall on a trip to Brownsea Island. And when I open it now, I am swept back without effort, into that same childhood feeling, unchanged by time.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
By James Hodgson (Illustrator) and Audrey Daly (Compiler)
Published in 1977 by Ladybird
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse