I can move the sea 100 poems by children ¦ Wondercrump Poetry Poems for children by children

In the first of these rich and fascinating collections, Gillian Clarke has chosen 100 poems written by children in the schools of Wales and northern England (three of the poems are presented in Welsh with English translations). The authors range in age from five to sixteen. Their writing is based mainly on observations and celebrations of the natural world, though at the heart of the book is a set of haunting poems inspired by Welsh mythology, including some particularly vivid reflections on Blodeuwedd, the lethally beautiful woman fashioned from flowers.

The second book contains 155 poems from the third Roald Dahl Foundation poetry competition. They come from a similar age range, but the variety of issues addressed and moods expressed is much wider. Many of the poems are troubled, ironic, angry; others are playful, quirkily observant, exultant. Mark Mulvihill (13) gives us a Whitmanesque litany of some of the delights and disasters occurring in one minute of the world's time; Katherine Byard (10) praises her violin's 'orange body tinted with bronze mist'; Lizzie Elliot (16) contemplates murder in a chilling schizoid soliloquy. The sheer scope and depth of the writing in this book puts to shame much of the jovial trivia that is offered by publishers is poetry for children.

Somebody should send copies of these excellent anthologies to the Department for Education as a radiant illustration of the fascinating work in language and literacy that is going on in classrooms all over the country right now.