I’ve Got a New Book
I’ve got a new book from my Grandfather Hyde.
It’s skin on the cover and paper inside,
And reads about Arabs and horses and slaves,
And tells how the Caliph of Bagdad behaves.
I’d not take a goat and a dollar beside
For the book that I got from my Grandfather Hyde.
First published in The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918).
This little rhyme feels almost too true to be nonsense. You can picture the boy, still half in his play clothes, sitting down with his prize before the fire — the kind of book that smells like adventure and grown-up secrets. It’s the pride of having something special that really belongs to him.
Blanche Fisher Wright caught that moment perfectly. The boy leans forward, lost in the story, while the fire flickers and the cat keeps watch like a quiet friend. Nothing happens, but everything’s happening — that hush when a new book opens a whole world in your head.
Jackson’s verse says it simply, and that’s its charm. It’s about the joy of discovery, and the way a single gift can make the world feel suddenly wider.
