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“little pitChers have BiG ears” 
the intriCate world oF Children and proverBs

WolFgAng mieder

The titular proverb from the 16th century, not particularly current these days, used 
to be employed by parents to signal each other that their little children (pitchers) 
were listening in on something that was not meant for their ears (handles on the 
pitchers). The assumption was that children could not possibly understand this 
metaphorical message and, judging by some experiments I have conducted with 
youngsters as well as my university students, it is indeed a proverb whose hidden 
meaning is difficult to comprehend. But the proverb also implies that the children 
are good and keen listeners to what adults are saying, and sooner or later they will 
catch on at decoding the metaphors of proverbs whose imagery is less obscure. 
This begs the question at what age children become comfortable in processing 
proverbs in their mind, whether it is worthwhile to teach them some of the most 
popular proverbs, and what educational tools exist in addition to normal discourse 
to aid in this developmental process. Once children are introduced to metaphorical 
proverbs that relate to their very existence, their interest in dealing with this type 
of indirect language is awakened. There is no doubt that children can handle 
proverbs at an earlier age than has long been thought possible, but much more 
study needs to be undertaken on how children employ proverbs once they have 
become part of their natural vocabulary.

Ever since the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget published his seminal study 
on The Language and Thought of the Child (1926) with its influential chapter 
“Some Peculiarities of Verbal Understanding in the Child Between the Ages 
of Nine and Eleven” (Piaget 1959: 127-161), scholars have struggled with the 
question at what age children are capable of processing, understanding, and 
employing metaphorical proverbs. There are those who maintained with Piaget 
that youngsters are incapable of dealing with proverbs until at least twelve 
years of age (Billow 1975, Cometa 1976, Douglas and Peel 1979), but this view 
began to be questioned by the end of the 1970s by primarily psycholinguists 
employing various innovative research methods, such as placing proverbs in a 
pictorial context (Honeck, Sowry, Voegtle 1978) or asking children to choose an 
appropriate proverb from a list of ten to end a vignette, to pair proverbs of similar 
meaning, and to paraphrase them rather than confronting them with a multiple 
choice proverbs test (Resnick 1977 and 1982). Especially Marilyn Nippold and 
her colleagues have advanced such developmentally oriented studies on proverb 
comprehension by children and adolescents, arguing that it is of paramount 
importance that proverbs are presented in a contextualized form (Nippold 1985 
and 1988, Nippold et al. 1988 and 1998). Such carefully executed investigations of 
various proverb tasks with statistical analyses have amply shown that children by 
the age of ten (fourth graders) are certainly ready to comprehend proverbs, that 
is at least two years earlier in their development than what Piaget had postulated. 



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The same has been shown to be true for the related proverbial expressions or 
general idioms (Gibbs 1987, Lodge and Leach 1975, Prinz 1983)

While psycholinguists have done impressive work in advancing knowledge 
about how children’s minds process and understand metaphorical proverbs, they 
have basically ignored the question of when children begin using proverbs once 
they have become acquainted with them. Folklorist Catherine Hudson, in her 
short paper on “Traditional Proverbs as Perceived by Children from an Urban 
Environment” (1972), tried to deal with proverbs in actual use, but she was able 
to observe only that while her fourth and fifth graders could deal with proverbs 
cited by adults they “never reached the point where they used proverbs in their 
conversation” (Hudson 1972: 17). But in this regard it is important to point to 
Judith Pasamanick’s unfortunately ignored dissertation The Proverb Moves the 
Mind: Abstraction and Metaphor in Children Six-Nine (1982) with folklorist 
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett being on the thesis committee at Yeshiva University 
in New York City. She took the time to set up discursive situations with 48 
children in which she, as the investigator, would discuss a given proverb to the 
point that they understood its meaning, were able to talk about it, and also put it 
to use. It took many weeks of serious transcription work and detailed analysis to 
show by realistic verbal exchanges that these youngsters could manage proverbs. 
Altering the proverb that “Talk does not cook rice” for a summary of sorts to 
“Talk Does Cook Rice: Proverb Abstraction through Social Interaction” (1983), she 
used a most fitting metaphor for her seminal work that shows that a narrative 
approach to proverb understanding and use is better than employing proverbs 
tests without contexts. It was a special pleasure and privilege for me when Judith 
Pasamanick and her husband visited me in Vermont. Our discussions resulted 
in the publication of her paper “Watched Pots Do Boil: Proverb Interpretation 
through Contextual Illustration” (1985) in Proverbium. The recorded transcripts of 
her discussions with the children of such proverbs as “You can’t have your cake 
and eat it too,” “Talk does not cook rice,” “A bird in the hand is worth two in 
the bush,” “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” “You can’t unscramble 
eggs,” “You can’ teach an old dog new tricks,” “The early bird catches the worm,” 
and others are most revealing of the social and ethical aspects of these discussions 
among young peers, and they are most certainly unique in the scholarship 
of children and proverbs. In this regard let me also point out the fascinating 
scholarship by the Finnish folklorist and paremiologist Liisa Granbom-Herranen 
who has investigated life stories of adults who recall in their narratives what 
pedagogical roles proverbs played as behavioral models once they had learned 
them as children (Granbom-Herranen 2008, 2009, 2011). Personal narratives can 
shed much light on lasting effects of proverbs encountered in youth. 

Regrettably, Judith Pasamanick did not become a paremiologically oriented 
folklorist but rather entered the professorial profession in the College of Education 
at Columbia University where she invited Pack Carnes, known for his fable and 
joke scholarship, and me to teach a folklore summer course – an unforgettably 
rewarding experience. In any case, a third section of her dissertation deals 
with “Pedagogic Applications” (322-351) where she discusses how her social-
interactional mode of proverb elicitation and employment can be used in a 



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constructive way in the classroom of an ethnically diverse group of children. 
Without wanting to be prescriptive, she argues that proverbs can facilitate the 
discussion of ethical values by giving the children the opportunity to analyze their 
implied wisdom. And it is with gladness and appreciation that I acknowledge here 
the influence that the pioneering work of my friend had on my own involvement 
with proverbs and children. She was correct more than thirty years ago, and she 
will remain so since there is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching children at 
least the most commonly known proverbs. The question is, of course, how to 
accomplish this task that ought to include Pasamanick’s open-mined discursive 
approach.

As luck would have it, I received a generous grant from the Templeton 
Foundation in 1999 to develop teaching strategies for acquainting fourth-grade 
students with wisdom in the form of proverbs. I teamed up with their teacher, 
Deborah Holmes, and we put together a number of teaching units that proved 
most beneficial to the youngsters who reacted with spirited enthusiasm that 
perhaps only children of the age between nine and ten are capable of exhibiting 
in a classroom situation. For the Character Development and Ethics Unit, we 
covered proverbs like “Where there is a will, there is a way,” “If at first you don’t 
succeed, try, try again,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” 
and “Actions speak louder than words.” During the United Nations’ Unit, we 
employed proverbs like “The pen is mightier than the sword,” “Different strokes 
for different folks,” “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” “United we stand, divided we 
fall,” and “A house divided cannot stand.” And during the Science/Math Units 
we dealt with such proverbs as “A stitch in time saves nine,” “Two heads are 
better than one,” “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” and “A miss is as good as a 
mile.” Altogether we covered 150 proverbs during the school year chosen from 
the established paremiological minimum of 300 Anglo-American proverbs (Haas 
2008, Mieder 1992). It was important to us to teach only those proverbs that are 
definitely current in our modern society, and we made sure that we included 
modern proverbs like “Garbage in, garbage out,” “There is no such things as a 
free lunch,” and “One picture is worth a thousand words.” One of the criticisms 
that I would level at some of the psycholinguistic studies is that they at times 
use proverbs that are not particularly current, to wit “Scalded cats fear even cold 
water,” “A caged bird longs for the clouds,” “The restless sleeper blames the bed,” 
“The pretty shoe often pinches the foot,” and “A mouse may help a lion” (Duthie 
et al. 2008: 162-163).

In any case, I traveled to the Elementary School at Milton, Vermont about 
every three weeks with my slide projector for a number of school years, telling 
my university students before going that they better be well prepared for the next 
lesson if they wanted to come even close to the excitement and eagerness of 
these wonderful young learners. They loved my slides from art, cartoons, comics, 
advertisement, headlines, etc., and they had absolutely no problems understanding 
so-called anti-proverbs, i.e., intentional humorous or satirical manipulations of the 
proverbs they had learned. There were also exciting projects for the children like 
writing essays about a proverb, translating the proverbial metaphors into drawings, 
acting out proverbs, etc. We have described all of this in our book “Children and 



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Proverbs Speak the Truth”: Teaching Proverbial Wisdom to Fourth Graders (Mieder 
and Holmes 2000). Our joint efforts with these incredible youngsters got into the 
papers, and we also had a half-hour interview with NPR that aired numerous 
times over the years as part of its “Humankind” series. But speaking of the book 
that includes forty proverbial drawings, perhaps the most exciting aspect are the 
answers of the students to the following questions of a questionnaire handed out 
at the end of the school year. Let me cite some of the questions with but a couple 
of answers here:

What is your favorite proverb? 
Actions speak louder than words. 
Every cloud has a silver lining. (p. 197)

Describe a situation when a proverb you learned this year helped you 
make a good decision. 
Don’t judge a book but its cover helped me read a great book. It had 
an ugly green cover and a boring name but “The Lost Bear” was a 
great book. 
My little sister and I were about to cross a street without looking and I 
stopped and said look before you leap. (p. 198)

Which proverb would help you if there was trouble on the playground? 
Two wrongs don’t make a right. 
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (p. 204) 

Which proverb would you like to remember for the rest of your life? 
Why? 
Time flies because you have to make life the fullest because it is so 
short once you think about it. 
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Because we need to learn that 
if we want something we have to work for it or earn it. (p. 205)

Did learning and discussing proverbs change your thinking or 
behavior in any way? Yes – No. 
Yes. Learning and discussing proverbs changed my behavior in how I 
thought. I think with more maturity now that I have learned proverbs. 
Yes. It changed my thinking about the way everything works. (p. 207)

Would you like to continue to learn proverbs? Yes – No. 
Yes. Because they are very interesting and can help you in life. 
Yes. Because proverbs are like morals. The more you know the less 
you make bad decisions. (p. 208)

Our book has seventeen such answers to these and other questions, and in my 
International Proverb Archives, I have many more from other years of teaching 
these kids. This is material that the psycholinguistic studies mentioned above—



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except for those by Judith Pasamanick—do not have and thus do not consider. 
There is no doubt that much more contextualized field research is necessary to 
really understand how children at a young age relate to proverbs.

The fact that proverbs can be taught and that they might have a positive 
influence on the character development of youngsters is nothing new. They 
have long been taught as ready-made bits of wisdom or at least as generalized 
expressions of experiences and observations as can be seen from early educational 
collections, school-books from the Middle Ages, translation exercises in foreign 
language classes, etc. (Mieder 2009, Orkin 1978). And let us not forget Benjamin 
Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanacks (1733-1758) and his infamous essay “The 
Way to Wealth” (1758) that ushered in the Puritan ethics with its 105 proverbs! 
Can’t you just imagine those children during the past two centuries who sat at 
the breakfast table and drank their milk out of a cup standing on a plate that 
both are inscribed with such proverbs as “Early to bed and early to rise, makes 
a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” “Laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon 
overtakes him,” or “He that by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold 
or drive”? In addition to such proverbial inscriptions these dishes often carried the 
label “Franklin’s Maxims” – no wonder that his name became attached to so many 
proverbs when in fact he only coined very few, to wit “There is sleeping enough 
in the grave” and “Three removes are as bad as a fire” (Mieder 2004b: 216-224). 
These Franklin mugs and plates have long since become collector’s items, and my 
wife has spent up to $300 a piece to assemble a dozen of these rare curiosities for 
me as very special and much-appreciated presents (McClinton 1980, Riley 1991). 
We have modern lists of proverbs that serve similar educational purposes, as for 
example the one in The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American 
Needs to Know (Hirsch et al. 1988: 46-57, Mieder 1992: 195-197). E.D. Hirsch has 
also published What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know with a list of sayings and 
phrases (Hirsch 2005: 57-65) that are explained by way of short statements and 
concise educational dialogues, as for example:

Birds of a feather flock together 
We use this saying [proverb] to mean that similar people, or people 
who have similar interests, like to be with each other. 
“Those guys always eat lunch together,” Jenny said, nodding toward a 
group of boys in the cafeteria. 
“Yeah,” said June, “They’re on the same baseball team and they love 
to talk about mitts and bats and home runs.” 
Jenny nodded. “Birds of a feather flock together!” (Hirsch 2005: 58)

But nowhere in these two books does he explain how these texts were chosen. 
It certainly would have been appropriate to have consulted proverb scholars to 
help select those texts (old and modern) that are current today. Jay Mechling has 
dealt with the issue of oversimplifying the educational and cultural value and 
significance of proverbs in his eye-opening article on “‘Cheaters Never Prosper’ 
and Other Lies Adults Tell Kids: Proverbs and the Culture Wars over Character” 
(2004). As he points out, there are plenty of inappropriate proverbs, and the mere 



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memorization of “good” proverbs – even they can be put to negative use due to 
their polyfunctionality, polysituativity, and polysemanticity (Mieder 2004b: 132) 
– does not make a good child let alone adult. And yet, at least some knowledge 
and understanding of proverbs is part of cultural literacy and there is no harm 
in acquainting children with them without making absolute rules out of their 
all-too-human limitations, as is immediately obvious from such contrasting pairs 
as “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” vs. “Out of sight, out of mind” and 
“Look before you leap” vs. “He who hesitates is lost.” A proverb at the right time 
in the right place is just fine, but the proverbial caveats “Nothing in excess” and 
“Everything in moderation” also apply to the use of proverbs.

Now that educational books have been mentioned, it is time to take a look at 
richly illustrated small books for children that have been published over the years 
to serve as enjoyable early introductions to the rich treasure trove of proverbs 
(Mieder et al. 1992). They are clearly intended to teach children proverbs, just 
as other children’s books acquaint youngsters with fables, fairy tales, legends, 
myths, etc. as part of cultural literacy. Judging by my university students who 
enroll in my lecture course on “‘Big Fish Eat Little Fish’: The Nature and Politics 
of Proverbs” every fall (Mieder 2015), I can honestly and without riding my 
proverbial hobby-horse state that they would well have benefitted from one of 
these charming books. It is always amazing to me at the beginning of the course 
that they have plenty of difficulties filling out a questionnaire with fifty common 
proverbs for which I ask them to complete either the first or the second half. Even 
though I have selected especially common proverbs from the Anglo-American 
paremiological minimum, many students cannot complete the partial queues for 
such standard proverbs as “A stitch in time saves nine,” “Cobbler stick to your 
last,” “A miss is as good as a mile,” “There is nothing new under the sun,” “You 
never miss the water until the well runs dry,” and “A burnt child dreads the 
fire.” But they all know the “fish”-proverb used in the catch-title of my course as 
becomes clear during the introductory lecture that deals with a diachronic survey 
of this proverb with references from literature, politics, the mass media, and about 
fifty slides of illustrations from Pieter Bruegel all the way to modern cartoons and 
advertisements (Mieder 1987: 178-228, and 2004b: 34-43). At that time I also show 
them that ever popular children’s book Swimmy (1963) by Leo Lionni that on a 
few beautifully illustrated pages first shows how a big fish swallows little fish, then 
how a special little fish starts organizing his peers into the shape of a large fish – I 
call it the solidarity fish – and how that unified creature chases the big fish away. 
More than fifty years after its first appearance this book is still on the market in 
numerous languages, and many of my students remember it from their childhood. 
In comparison to other children’s books on proverbs that I have collected over 
the years, this is particularly memorable since it is basically a pictorial story with 
but little writing that teaches youngsters about just one important proverb about 
power, greed, rapacity that unfortunately is part of human nature that can, at least 
at times, be overcome by unified efforts.

My interest in children’s books on proverbs – besides my obsession with 
collecting everything proverbial for my ever expanding International Proverb 
Archives – began when, some thirty years ago, I came across the sixteen-page 



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booklet Old Proverbs with New Pictures by Lizzie Lawson published without a 
date by the Merrimack Publishing Corporation in New York City. Realizing that 
this treasure of beautifully illustrated children depicting the proverbs “Little boats 
keep near shore, big ships may venture more,” “Half a loaf is better than no 
bread,” “There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip,” “A bird in the hand is 
worth two in the bush,” “It’s an ill wind that blows no body good,” “You may 
lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink,” “The more haste, the less 
speed,” “Birds of a feather flock together,” “Never buy a pig in a poke,” “Out of 
the frying pan into the fire,” “Too much of a good thing is good for nothing,” “Tis 
a poor heart that never rejoices,” “The greatest strokes make not the sweetest 
music,” Too many cooks spoil the broth,” and “Coming events cast their shadows 
before.” I never succeeded in finding out more about this slender publication, but 
I have discovered the fabulous book from which these illustrations were taken. 
It is Old Proverbs with New Pictures (London: Cassell, Petter, Calpin & Co.) that 
on 64 pages contains 35 proverb illustrations by the British children’s book artist 
Lizzie Lawson (1867-1920) and little explanatory poems by the unknown British 
poet Clara Mateaux that were deleted from the small reprint. Here is at least one 
example, albeit without the illustration:

It is no use crying over spilt milk
Do not fret
 For fretting ended,
Never bowl
 Or platter mended,
Bind that finger,
 Wipe that tear,
Next, more careful
 Step my dear,
And remember
 What I say,
Milk, once spilt,
 Is spilt for aye. (p. 22)

Admittedly, such verses would not come across to today’s children, and the 
illustrations are also dated for modern youngsters. Nevertheless, it is one of the 
most splendid children’s proverb books that definitely deserves to be reprinted 
as a unique curiosity with plenty of entertaining value. And paremiologists like 
myself will, of course, also enjoy the fact that Lord John Russell’s famous proverb 
definition “The wit of one, the wisdom of many” (1823) appears – albeit in reverse 
order – underneath the cover picture of five children.

For the past three decades, I have searched for other proverb books intended 
for children by spending time in the children’s section of bookstores, asking 
shopkeepers for possible leads, and also trying the internet. While I am excited 
about the ten additional books that I have been able to purchase during the past 
decades, it is a regrettably small harvest. Proverb collections as such – popular and 
scholarly – can actually be found in general bookstores, and I would think that 



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well-illustrated children’s books on proverbs could conquer their market as well. 
And it would be desirable that such books would include particularly popular 
traditional proverbs as well as more modern proverbs like “Go big or go home” or 
“The second mouse gets the cheese” (Doyle et al. 2012). In any case, what follows 
is a short survey of the children’s proverb books that I possess:

Hughes, Shirley (ill.). 1977. Make Hay While the Sun Shines. A Book of Proverbs. 
Chosen by Alison M. Abel. London: Faber and Faber. 48 pp.; rpt. London: Faber 
and Faber, 1998. 40 pp.

The book with its proverbial title includes 33 pen and ink drawings of children 
acting out standard proverbs like “Many hands make light work,” “Don’t swap 
horses in mid-stream,” and “Let sleeping dogs lie.” The proverbs are cited at 
the bottom of the page with very short explanatory comments. I was especially 
pleased to see the proverb “A stitch in time saves nine” illustrated together with 
the concise explanation: “If you put something right as soon as it goes wrong, 
you won’t have so much trouble later” (p.7). This is one of the proverbs that not 
a single student in my proverb class this past fall knew! Little wonder perhaps, 
since nobody appears to be mending clothes any longer. I personally have fond 
memories seeing my mother stitch the holes in our socks when we grew up 
after the Second World War. Since the proverb obviously need not refer only to 
mending clothes, it still has plenty of good use in our modern society and could 
well still be taught and learned.

Hughes, Shirley (ill.). 1980. “Over the Moon”: A Book of Sayings. London: Faber 
and Faber. 48 pp.; rpt. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. 40 pp.

Having had success with her first proverb book, Shirley Hughes brought out a 
companion volume depicting 47 proverbial expressions in pen and ink drawings 
(sometimes two on a page). The proverbial expressions are once again printed 
at the bottom of the page with a very short explanatory comment beneath. Some 
of the depicted phrases are “up the creek with a paddle,” “a bull in a china 
shop,” “casting pearls before swine,” and “hitting the nail on the head.” Such 
metaphorical expressions literally call out to be illustrated, and I was especially 
interested to see that Shirley Hughes included the proverbial expression “Being 
a dog in the manger” that I have traced back to classical times (Mieder 2011). 
The pen and ink drawing makes its meaning perfectly clear, but the explanatory 
comment “Refusing to give up something you don’t really want to someone who 
needs it” (p. 6) helps to understand the metaphor. None of my university students 
knew this expression and not surprisingly so, since fables, where the metaphor 
comes from, are not covered much in school any longer. And yet, it is such a 
great image, and I wish we could maintain it since it still fits perfectly to human 
behavior in the modern age.

Fraser, Betty (ill.). 1990. First Things First: An Illustrated Collection of Sayings – 
Useful and Familiar for Children. New York: Harper & Row. 32 pp.

While the two books by Shirley Hughes probably would not appeal to 
youngster these days because of the lack of colorful illustrations, this book by 



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Betty Fraser presents plenty of them with children from various ethnic groups. 
It includes two dozen well-known proverbs for which it explains in words and 
pictures what they mean and when to use them. The pictures are full of good 
humor, and they are entitled by an introductory statement with one or two 
possible proverbial answers interspersed on the page, as for example:

What to say when you are the first
The early bird catches the worm.
First come, first served.
First things first. (p. 14)

The accompanying picture shows a bird outside of the kitchen eating a worm 
and a child sitting at the table as the first family member being served breakfast 
by the mother. There is also a little dog wanting to eat and thinking to himself 
“First things first”. This book is clearly meant to teach children proverbs, and my 
proverb students would be able to explain to the little girl that the proverb “First 
come, first served” is actually a medieval Latin legal proverb that relates to the 
miller. The customary law was that the farmer who would arrive at the mill first 
would have his grain ground first. The proverb was translated into the vernacular 
languages, with Geofrrey Chaucer still alluding to this practice with “Whoso that 
first to mille comth, first grynt”. But by 1599 the truncated variant “First come, 
first served” already appeared in England and it has long displaced the longer 
version (Mieder 2004b: 43-52). A child does not need to know this, of course, but 
this example shows that there is much to learn about proverbs for the inquisitive 
mind, even at a young age. I am not sure if I would have included “A trouble 
shared is a trouble halved” that is not really current, but I am glad that there is a 
two-page spread on the golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do 
unto you.” The twice repeated text and the two series of three pictures each make 
the meaning of this basic rule of civil and humane behavior perfectly clear to the 
young readers and viewers.

Kneen, Maggie (ill.). 1992. “Too Many Cooks ...” and Other Proverbs. New York: 
Green Tiger Press. 26 pp.

This is a beautifully illustrated book with all the characters being animals. It 
presents twenty-five very well-known proverbs, with some proverbs like “Birds of 
a feather flock together” getting a two-page illustration, while another two-page 
spread presents a horse and buggy at a stable with five proverbs written next to 
appropriate place: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” “Never look a gift 
horse in the mouth,” “Don’t put the cart before the horse,” “You can lead a horse 
to water, but you can’t make it drink,” and “Don’t lock the stable door after the 
horse has bolted.” The first and last proverb might be a bit difficult for a small 
child to grasp. For parents who might have difficulties there are two pages at the 
end of the book with short explanations, to wit for the “stable”-proverb: “It is 
useless to take precautions after an accident has happened when they should have 
been taken before.” In any case, this is a charming and entertaining book for very 



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young children, but it is, as the others mentioned thus far, unfortunately out of 
print.

Hurwitz, Johanna. 1994. A Word to the Wise and Other Proverbs. Illustrations by 
Robert Rayevsky. New York: Morrow Junior Books. 32 pp.

As stated on the dust cover of this book, its author Johanna Hurwitz was 
inspired by an oil painting called The Dutch Proverbs (1646/4) by David Teniers 
II that depicts 45 proverbs and proverbial expressions on a large canvas very 
much in the tradition of Pieter Bruegel’s famous painting The Netherlandish 
Proverbs (1559) with its over 100 proverbial scenes (Dundes and Stibbe 1981, 
Mieder 2004a): “A picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes words can 
inspire a picture. On a trip to England, I saw a large painting at Belvoir Castle [at 
Grantham]. It depicted many proverbial scenes together on a single canvas. That 
painting sparked the idea for this book.” As my wife and I did on our pilgrimage 
to Belvoir Castle some years ago, Hurwitz too must have bought a postcard of 
the picture at the museum shop that lists the proverbial phrases. In turn she 
showed it to the children’s book illustrator Robert Rayevsky who adapted the 
17th-century small-town painting to the metropolis of New York City with Teniers’ 
small river becoming the East River. Altogether his picture is comprised of twenty 
proverb scenes, with the actual texts printed around the outside borders. The left 
side includes proverbs like “Don’t cry over spilt milk,” “Birds of a feather flock 
together,” and “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” while the right side features 
such proverbs as “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “An apple a day keeps the 
doctor away,” and “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” The proverb picture 
appears twice on the front and back inside cover pages, clearly entertaining 
children and adults alike in searching out the proverb scenes and gaining some 
understanding of their traditional wisdom. The inside of this oversize book (9x11) 
includes 22 proverbs with some of them like “A bird in the hand is worth two 
in the bush” and “When the cat’s away the mice will play” covering two whole 
pages. The proverbs are printed at the top or the bottom of the page in relatively 
small lettering without any explanations. This surely is a book that is intended 
primarily for viewing pleasure while at the same time introducing children to very 
well-known proverbs, with the one about “The pen is mightier than the sword” 
showing Benjamin Franklin at a lectern with a quill in hand and surrounded by 
children. This illustration serves as the introduction and is accompanied by a short 
preface that quite correctly states that Franklin is “known of having recorded 
many proverbs in a series of books called Poor Richard Almanack. Benjamin 
Franklin was aware that there was much for us to learn from the simple truths of 
proverbs” (p. 3). In other words, Hurwitz refrains from perpetuating the falsehood 
that Franklin coined dozens of proverbs that one hears and reads to this day, 
something that is especially the case for the apocryphal attachment of his name 
to the beautifully illustrated proverb “Early to bed, and early to rise makes a man 
healthy, wealthy, and wise” (pp. 24-25) that actually dates back to a late medieval 
Latin proverb (Barbour 1974, Mieder 1993: 98-134)



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49

Brennan-Nelson, Denise. 2003. My Momma Likes to Say. Illustrations by Jane 
Monroe Donovan. Chelsea, Michigan: Sleeping Bear Press. 32 pp.
Brennan-Nelson, Denise. 2004. My Teacher Likes to Say. Illustrations by Jane 
Monroe Donovan. Chelsea, Michigan: Sleeping Bear Press. 32 pp.
Brennan-Nelson, Denise. 2007. My Grandma Likes to Say. Illustrations by Jane 
Monroe Donovan. Chelsea, Michigan: Sleeping Bear Press. 32 pp.

These somewhat oversized (10x10) books are proof of the proverb that all 
good things come in three! The collaborative work between the author Denise 
Brennan-Nelson and the illustrator Jane Monroe resulted in the poetic, prosaic, 
and pictorial explanation of about a dozen proverbs and proverbial expressions 
in each book. The children learn that they most likely have heard them from 
their mother, teacher, or grandmother. On a two-page spread the proverb is 
written in large letters at the top followed by some verses and in smaller print a 
few explanatory comments, with the wonderful colorful illustrations bringing it 
all to life. The first book presents proverbs like “Money doesn’t grow on trees” 
and proverbial expressions like “It’s raining cats and dogs” (the illustration of 
animals tumbling through the rain is also on the cover), and I was pleased to see 
a modern proverb included that might serve as an example of the modus operandi 
of these books:

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” 
My momma likes to say. 
I’m not sure what she means 
But I like it anyway.

If life gives me lemons 
I’ll squeeze them good and hard, 
Then add some sugar, stir it up 
And sell it from our yard.

All of this is surrounded by several children preparing lemonade in a front yard to 
be sold to passersby, but in the upper right corner, in small print, is this additional 
information:

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) first said, “When fate hands us lemons, 
let us try to make lemonade.” 
Lemons are very sour and yet they are used to make something very 
sweet and delicious – lemonade! This idiom suggests that we should 
take a difficult situation and turn it into something good. 
Can you think of a time when you took a bad situation and turned it 
into something good? 
[this is followed by eight lines of a lemonade recipe] (24-25)

All of this is written in such small print that I doubt that children would enjoy 
reading it. But perhaps this is meant for the parents to read and discuss with the 
children. I should also add that none of the books state anywhere what the age-



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range of the children is that are being addressed. Finally, calling Andrew Carnegie 
the originator of the proverb is stretching things a bit. He helped to popularize it, 
with the earliest reference thus far being from 1910 (Doyle, Mieder, Shapiro 2012: 
140). By the third book proverbial expressions and comparisons like “growing 
like a weed,” “a horse of a different color,” “being no spring chicken,” and “hit 
the hay” outnumber proverbs like “When the cats away the mice will play” and 
“Where there’s a will there’s a way.” One of my favorites is the verbal and pictorial 
treatment of the proverbial comparison “like a bull in a china shop” (16-17) that 
has been shown to have an international distribution from classical times to today 
in a number of variants including an elephant instead of the bull (Trokhimenko 
1999). 

Gregorich, Barbara. 2006. Waltur [sic] Buys a Pig in a Poke and Other Stories. 
Illustrations by Kristin Sorra. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin. 54 pp.
Gregorich, Barbara. 2007. Waltur [sic] Paints Himself into a Corner and Other 
Stories. Illustrations by Kristin Sorra. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin. 
48 pp.

These two books are very different from the others in that they teach or 
exemplify proverbs by stories with many colorful illustrations showing how Waltur 
the bear in company with his bear friends finds out the truth behind them. The 
first volume treats the three proverbs “Don’t buy a pig in a poke,” “Don’t count 
your chickens before they’re hatched,” and “You can lead a horse to water, but 
you can’t make it drink.” Here are a few of the short prose lines printed as if they 
were poems of the first story:

A Pig in a Poke

The three friends went to the fair.
“I will go on rides,” said Darwin.
“I will play games,” said Matilda.
“And I will buy a pig,” said Waltur.

“Be careful,” said Matilda.
“Do not buy a pig in a poke.”

“What’s a poke?” asked Darwin.
“A poke is a bag,” Matilda answered.
“You cannot see through a bag.
You should not buy what
You cannot see,” she said.

Matilda went to play games.
Darwin went to go on rides.
Waltur went to buy a pet. (6-7)



Mieder  “LittLe Pitchers have Big ears”

51

And on it goes for more pages as Waltur finds his understanding and appreciation 
of the proverb. The second volume presents stories around “Don’t put the cart 
before the horse”, “Don’t paint yourself into a corner,” and “Let sleeping dogs lie” 
of which the first two would normally be considered as proverbial expressions 
that are rendered into proverbs of sorts by adding the negative imperative “Don’t” 
element to them. But to be sure, the stories and illustrations are educational in an 
entertaining fashion, and children would surely enjoy having them read to them or 
reading them on their own while glancing at the pictures.

These then are the books that I have been able to collect over the years, 
leaving examples of similar books in German, Russian, and Spanish aside for now. 
Of course, there are other ways to teach proverbs to children bringing to mind 
a large framed colorful poster of a painting by the British artist William Belcher 
with the title As the Saying Goes (1973) that hangs in my office in our home. It 
contains 51 proverb scenes with captions for the obvious delight and edification 
of children. As in The Netherlandish Proverbs by Bruegel, a house is placed into 
an open landscape with a river running through it, with the various scenes and 
captions bringing to life such proverbs as “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” “Too 
many cooks spoil the broth,” “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” “Look before 
you leap,” “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” and, befitting an English 
poster, “An Englishman’s home is his castle” which is nowadays usually cited more 
generally as “A man’s home is his castle.” My wife and I remember fondly how 
our nephews and niece would stand in front of the picture enjoying the proverbial 
messages.

Observing children deal with proverbs can indeed be a lot of fun for adults. 
As they learn and understand them, it is of developmental interest to hear them 
utter them correctly in different contexts. But there are also those perennial 
lists prepared by elementary school teachers where children have been asked 
to complete truncated proverbs that they often do not yet know. We have all 
received such humorous lists via the internet, and I have quite a collection of 
them. Two of my favorites are “A rolling stone plays a guitar” and “A bird in the 
hand is warm” that clearly have some truth to them. And children also come up 
spontaneously with proverb-like statements that might just have it in them to 
become new proverbs, to wit such wisdom as “Parents have eyes in the backs of 
their heads,” “You can’t hide mashed potatoes in your hat,” “Popping popcorn 
without a lid isn’t smart,” and “You can’t trust dogs to watch your food” that H. 
Jackson Brown has collected in his richly illustrated book Wit and Wisdom from 
the Peanut Butter Gang. A Collection of Wise Words from Young Hearts (1994: 25, 
52, 63, 64, see also Gash 1999, Knox 1925, Stark 1992). Adults throughout the 
world have coined plenty of proverbs about children and child-rearing (Palacios 
1996, Reinsberg-Düringsfeld 1864), and so why should we not also look more 
seriously at children’s very own proverbs? It certainly behooves folklorists and 
others to pay much more attention to children and proverbs not only from the 
dominant psycholinguistic approach but also by way of rigorous field research to 
find out when, how, and why children employ proverbs that they have learned 
in actual verbal communication. Teaching them traditional and modern proverbs, 



“LittLe Pitchers have Big ears” Mieder

52

not so much as moral maxims as was done in former times but rather as culturally 
relevant generalizations, still makes a lot of sense as they develop into responsible 
citizens with at least a little bit of help from the insights of the experienced 
wisdom of proverbial common-sense.  

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Weltgeschichte einer Redensart. Burlington: The University of Vermont.


	CFR_2017_Part9
	“Little Pitchers Have Big Ears” The Intricate World of Children and Proverbs
	Wolfgang Mieder


	CFR_2017_Part10
	CFR_2017_Part11
	CFR_2017_Part12
	CFR_2017_Part13



