The Big Book of Little Poems

You can learn a lot from this freziedly illustrated and winsomely collected book. Terry Wogan likes a bit of Gray's 'Elegy'. Tony Blair likes a bit of a corner of a foreign field. Henry Cooper and Cilla Black are not sure about capitals. Gyles Brandreth is not sure about doggerel. Blunkett D has problems with literacy. Also, Friends are Important. Especially friends famous, ex-famous and short-of-famous, who will do recitations for your celebs' party of a book, which contains some funny poems, a few real poems by poets, and a lot of duds, in a whole heap that lurches from mood to mood and reader to reader. Royalties to the National Advice Centre for Children with Reading Difficulties, who will not get much else out of it. Would it have been a gesture, sort of, to make a book for them to read? No, poems are a laugh, poems are a laugh, poems are a laugh - even when they are not funny and are not for kids.