There _____ a cartoon and rhymes.

If you’re not sure of the rules of agreement, you can then flip the sentence around to make the word order more comfortable.

Rhymes and a cartoon _____ there.

If you still don’t have a feel for it, swap in other words you might use more often.

Cats and a dog ______ there.

Hopefully, now you really feel that you need to use, “were,” in this sentence.

As far as the rule, whenever you use “and” you have a compound and that requires a plural verb.

And if you’re not sure what form of the past tense, “to be,” is singular and which is plural, just test it with a simple sentence.

“Last spring, the flowers were pretty,” not, “Last spring, the flowers was pretty.”

To sound better, state, “A few Mother Goose rhymes and a Peanuts cartoon were pinned to the bulletin board”.

(Ignoramus) said that there are two subjects so therefore the verb has to be in the plural

The two subjects are connected by the connecting word “and”

so he is quite correct when he re-writes the statement as the following:

There were a peanuts cartoon and a few mother goose ryhmes pinned to the bulletin board.

(subect)= A Peanuts cartoon and a few mother goose ryhmes

verb= were pinned

(to the bulletin board)

There was a peanuts cartoon and a few mother goose rhymes pinned to the bulletin board.

If that was taken out it would be WERE (referring to the mother goose rhymes)

There were a few mother goose rhymes pinned to the bulletin board.

“There were a Peanuts cartoon and a few Mother Goose rhymes pinned to the bulletin board.”

First of all, I used “were” because “a few … rhymes” is plural. I changed it around and put the rhymes part first because it flows better. I also capitalized Mother Goose and Peanuts because they are title.

‘was’ goes with ‘cartoon’ because it’s singular. the rest of the sentence doesn’t matter for the first verb.

But.

That sounds funny. “There were a Peanuts cartoon…”

SOooooooo….

What I would do is: Reverse the order of the objects.

“There were a few Mother Goose rhymes and a Peanuts cartoon pinned to the bulletin board.”

WAS – because “Peanuts” is a title of a cartoon and doesn’t refer to more than one peanut, although the word is plural. If you were talking about peanuts as a snack it would be different. “There were peanuts in the kitchen”.

If you use the singular ‘was’, you are arguing that a peanuts cartoon and a few mother goose rhymes are one theme. You are saying that they are one.

If you use the plural ‘were’, you are arguing that they are totally different.

I would use ‘There was a Peanuts cartoon and a few mother goose rhymes pinned to the bulletin board” because I think it sounds better. But I dont think either one is really wrong – this is a judgement call.