In the past, I have pointed out copy-editing weaknesses at Story Book Forest at Idlewild Park, in southwestern PA. When I was last there, shortly before Halloween, my son stopped in his tracks and said, “They repainted the Little Miss Muffet Sign!”
And he was right… they repainted some of the signs. Just now, when I was clearing out my camera’s SD card, I noticed I had a set of before and after photos. Here’s one sign in September 2005:
Here’s the same sign in October, 2008.
I must say I rather miss the webbing, and the lettering for “Little Miss Muffet” is almost illegible. (What’s the deal with the vines?) The new sign omits the period after “whey,” so that the revision is now a run-on sentence. But at least the egregious “besider” error has been fixed.
Lestie, thanks for your comment. The version of “Little Miss Muffet” that you quoted is also the one I learned.
I have a few more photos from this park:
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/the-storybook-forest-copyedito/
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/lrhf/cruel.htm
Just came across your site doing some surfing … started at short story writing! This really seems like a charming idea and if anyone has other pictures of the park I would love to see them, perhaps you would consider sending them to me privately or to post them here if space etc. allows.
I write from Johannesburg South Africa, but was schooled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and went to Uni in Durban. With that ‘colonial’ background our wording to Miss Muffet differed slightly in that she sat on HER tuffet, ate HER curds and whey and ALONG came the spider. It makes no difference, just thought I would say a say, as we say here.
Here’s to many children and family outings in the park and to a fine and successful 2009 for everyone. Best regards to all.
J, you’re right, this particular site calls itself “Story Book Forest,” though the tradition of the English language would first start hyphenating “story-book” and then collapse it to form a compound word. I’d say the transition from “story-book” to “storybook” happened at least a century ago, but you’re right, the park is consistent about calling this attration “Story Book Forest.”
We are season ticket holders, and we think the park is worth it.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the park, the proper name is “Story Book Forest”, not “Storybook Forest”. I suppose both would be grammatically correct. Regardless, it’s a great place to take the children!
Thanks for the link. Yes, I did hear about it a few weeks ago, but I’d fogotten about it; thanks for the reminder.
This reminds me of a story you may have already seen (but I only just found your blog last week, so if you’ve posted about this already, please forgive me): [LINK]