My Left Foot
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover is from The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Poetry (cover illustration by Peter Weevers). Edited by Alison Sage (who also edited The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Literature), this sumptuous anthology is loosely divided into four sections corresponding to age starting with nursery rhymes and first poems through to poems for older children and classic poetry. Poems from such modern poets as Roger McGough, Ted Hughes, Wendy Cope and Maya Angelou sit alongside poems by Longfellow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shelley and Shakespeare. The anthology is illustrated in full colour and black and white. Newly commissioned illustrations from, for example, Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes and Nicola Bayley are included alongside illustrations by Randolph Caldecott, Jessie Willcox Smith and Kate Greenaway. With such a comprehensive range of poems for 2-11 year olds and upwards, this is a wonderful family book.
My Left Foot
There is definitely a place for this famous autobiography in secondary schools. I have seen extracts in several source-books and even on a GCSE exam paper, which prompted one of my pupils to ask to read the whole book before he left school for good. The story needs no summary here; what is worth recording is that Christy Brown's personality commands the reader's respect and admiration and leaves an indelible impression. The writing seduces the reader and leaves her/him knowing that here was an extraordinary person who, against all odds, reached out to win our hearts. Used alongside the film this could be a valuable, memorable resource.


