- As posted yesterday, the illustrations of Vernon Grant gave us the cereal icons Snap, Crackle and Pop. After they helped make Rice Krispies an enormous success, Kelloggs employed Grant to illustrate Mother Goose nursery rhymes which graced the back of the packages.

Again, these pictures brought more success for the cereal company, and they ultimately brought them to a publisher to bind all of Grant’s illustrations in one book.

The result was the book that appears to the right. Vernon Grant’s Mother Goose is still available some 70 years later. He also had a second book, Vernon Grant’s Santa Claus.

Grant was a graduate of Chouinard Art Institute. While most of his classmates headed to Disney’s studio to break into animation, Grant went East to New York where he sought advertising work and illustration jobs. He had some modest success with his gnome characters which finally led to the Kellogg’s job where his life’s work was set.

The Mother Goose book contains 25 illustrated pages; each page contains an illustration accompanied by the Mother Goose rhyme. These are the illustrations below:

1
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

2
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

3 4
Tom Tom the Piper’s Son / Deedle Deedle Dumpling

5 6
Little Jack Horner / Jack Sprat could eat no fat

7 8
Old King Cole was a merry old soul . Sing a song of sixpence

9
There was an old woman of Harrow

11
Old woman in the shoe / A wise old owl lived in an oak

13
Humpty Dumpty/ Peter Peter Pumpkin eater

15
Jerry Hall / A crooked sixpence

17
Rain Rain Go Away / Three men in a tub

(Note that the three men in the tub are Grant’s Snap Crackle and Pop.

19
Nose Nose, Jolly red nose / Ladybug Ladybug

21
Simple Simon and the Pieman

23
Friday Night’s Dream / How many miles to Babylon

24
Little Tee Wee

Thaks, again, go to Bill Peckmann for the introduction to Vernon Grant as well as the loan of the book.