First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie's <i>The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren</i> is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called &quot;the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out.&quot;