McGrath of Harlow, I resent the assumption that I "must have had a deprived childhood".
I was not aware, until you pointed me towards Wikipaedia, that the US had a different meaning of the term "Mother Goose". All of the books I read, or had read to me, were by British printers.
My childhood was exactly the same as others of my generation - we played on bomb sites, made things from scrap materials, swapped bits of shrapnel and, yes, read any books that we might have been able to obtain, mostly British and pre-war. Things American had not then been invented!

Colyn.