Nocturnal 
Ms Rachel has never been one to shy away from an opinion, and her latest one is about to ruin story time for a lot of parents.
The children’s entertainer, real name Rachel Griffin Accurso, has named three nursery rhymes she believes should be “retired” for good, branding them racist. She also suggested a fourth needs a bit of a rewrite.
Speaking on the SubwayTakes podcast with host Kareem Rahma, Ms Rachel didn’t hold back when the conversation turned to which classic kids’ songs have overstayed their welcome.
Which nursery rhymes does Ms Rachel want gone?
“So the ones that really need to be retired are racist ones,” she told Rahma. “Jimmy Crack Corn, Oh! Susanna, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”
All three have troubled histories. Jimmy Crack Corn dates back to the 1840s and is widely understood to mock enslaved African Americans. Oh! Susanna comes from the same period, having emerged from 19th-century blackface minstrel shows.
Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe is a bit different, in that the modern version most people grew up with is harmless. But older, once widely used versions of the counting rhyme swapped out the word “tiger” for a racial slur, which is why it’s still viewed as divisive today.
Ms Rachel argued there’s no shortage of alternatives, telling Rahma: “People are like, ‘What will we do? What will we do?’ when I’m like, you know how many wonderful nursery rhymes and kids’ songs exist? And we can make new ones.”
Three Little Kittens gets a mention too
She wasn’t finished there. Ms Rachel also took aim at Three Little Kittens, a rhyme far more familiar to British audiences, though she was less firm about scrapping this one entirely.
“Some nursery rhymes and kids’ songs need to be retired. Some I think can be changed,” she said. “Like, I feel like ‘The Three Little Kittens’ should not be denied the pie.”
When Rahma asked her to talk him through the rhyme, she explained: “Three little kittens, they lost their mittens, and they began to cry. And then, blah, blah, blah. And then the mum’s like, ‘You naughty kittens, you can’t have any pie.'”
Her suggestion? Give the kittens some practical help instead of punishing them. “I feel like she can give them some strategies for not losing the mittens all the time,” Ms Rachel said. “So that one maybe change a little bit. I’m not super against that one. It’s like okay.”
Elsewhere in the same podcast, Ms Rachel used her platform to discuss more serious global issues, including child immigration detention and the situation facing children in Gaza, referencing findings from a United Nations commission of inquiry.
Where things stand now
Ms Rachel has become known for speaking her mind well beyond the world of children’s TV, having previously waded into rows involving Ed Sheeran and Macklemore over comments on the Middle East.
Her latest comments have already been widely shared online, with clips from the podcast racking up reaction on TikTok. There’s no suggestion any of the rhymes she mentioned will be formally banned anywhere, but the debate over whether old nursery rhymes still belong in modern classrooms and nurseries looks set to rumble on.
