Ten of the Best: Poetry Books for Children

Morag Styles selects her top ten titles.

Confining myself to choosing only ten of the best poetry books for children has been an agonising task! I’m allowing myself to cheat in this introduction by recommending Michael Rosen’s anthology A-Z: the best of Children’s Poetry because it includes poems by poets who should be in my top ten list – James Berry, Valerie Bloom, Tony Mitton, John Mole, Grace Nichols, Brian Patten and Benjamin Zephaniah. Allowed additional choices I would also cite the late/great Adrian Mitchell’s Umpteen Pockets, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789), Ann and Jane Taylor’s Rhymes for the Nursery (1806), Christina Rossetti’s Sing-Song (1872) and Edward Lear’s Nonsense Songs (1872).

A Child’s Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson, ill. Eve Garnett, Puffin (2008), 978 0 14 132462 3, £5.99 pbk
Never out of print during the125 years since its original publication, this volume still pleases the young today. Largely autobiographical, Stevenson writes convincingly in the first person as if in the voice of a child and is especially good on play and the imagination. Only the Envoys section has a nostalgic, adult tone but the final poem, ‘To Any Reader’, is one of the most honest and painful ever written about the loss of childhood. (5+)

Collected Poems
Allan Ahlberg, ill. Charlotte Voake, Puffin (2008), 978 0 14 138259 3, £14.99 hbk
Ahlberg is deservedly popular with children for his fiction, picture books and poetry. His verse hits the spot for many young readers and it is a great treat to have most of the published poems ‘sifted’ by the author (who writes an amusing ‘after words’) in this handsome volume, delightfully illustrated by Charlotte Voake. Ahlberg calls it light verse but it is more than that – taking the sharply observed, humane viewpoint on childhood of the teacher he once was. (5+)

Collected Poems for Children
Ted Hughes, ill. Raymond Briggs, Faber (2005), 978 0 571 21502 7, £9.99 pbk
Nature is Hughes’ dominant theme and much of his prolific output for younger readers (published between 1961 and 1999) takes a realistic look at the animal kingdom. The poetry is original, powerful, honest and highly topical for today’s environmentally conscious era. Sometimes, as in Moon Whales, the poems are set in a luminous landscape of the poet’s imagination. Beautiful illustrations by Raymond Briggs soften some harsh truths. (7+)

I Had a Little Cat: Collected Poems for Children
Charles Causley, ill. John Lawrence, Macmillan (2009), 978 0 330 46411 6, £6.99 pbk
You get the best of Causley’s many exceptional collections for children in this volume and John Lawrence’s stunning woodcut illustrations too. In deceptively simple, low key, yet memorable verse, Causley explores childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience with great musicality in ballads, songs, prayers and poems, often set on the Cornish coast and full of its folklore. This is poetry which deserves to last the test of time. (7+)

New and Collected Poems for Children
Carol Ann Duffy, ill. Alice Stevenson, Faber (2009), 978 0 571 21968 1, £16.99 hbk
Give praise that the Poet Laureate also writes for children to such brilliant effect. This volume includes most of her excellent collections for the young to date, the contents rearranged by Duffy, plus sparkling new poems set in Venice. Unafraid to tackle dark themes of childhood, as well as its joys, we have a full range from nursery rhymes to haikus, riddles, rock’n’roll; cautionary fairy tales; tender poems of mother-love; elegies to the passing of time; vibrant songs, singers and artists; moons and night skies a plenty. Absolutely fabulous! (7+)

Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here
Michael Rosen, ill. Quentin Blake, Puffin (2008), 978 0 14 031784 8, £5.99 pbk
After a dazzling run as Children’s Laureate, it is good to find Puffin reissuing some of Rosen’s best collections. There’s so much to enjoy in this volume from zany jokes and tongue-twisters to longer poems that, with a little added Rosen magic, tell hilarious tales convincingly from the child’s point of view. Look out for his soon to be published new collection, Michael Rosen’s Big Book of Bad Things. (8+)

All the Best: The Selected Poems of Roger McGough
Ill. Lydia Monks, Puffin (2003), 978 0 14 131637 6, £9.99 pbk
Ingeniously funny and quite simply the wittiest wordster in the business, McGough was the deserving winner of the CLPE* Poetry Award for this stunning volume, amusingly illustrated by Lydia Monks. The Poet Laureate calls him ‘the patron saint of poetry’; indeed, McGough has positively promoted poetry for adults and children in many different contexts over many years. This volume showcases poetry which often also has a dark or edgy flavour to it. (10+)

The Young Inferno
John Agard, ill. Satoshi Kitamura, Frances Lincoln (2008), 978 1 84507 769 3, £12.99 hbk
I took the risk of promoting this exuberant collection at an academic conference in Italy! Even a Dante scholar in the audience seemed charmed by Agard’s ‘take’ on this classic text, superbly interpreted by Satoshi Kitamura who has become a regular illustrator of Agard’s poetry. Using Aesop as a ‘tour-guide’, Agard tells us that ‘behind this adventure into Hell lies a search for love’. If it makes one reader go to the original, all to the good; there’s plenty to admire in its own right in 13 dramatic cantos for teenage readers. (12+)

Red Cherry Red
Jackie Kay, ill. Rob Ryan, Bloomsbury (2007), 978 0 7475 8979 2, £6.99 pbk with CD
Winner of the CLPE* Poetry Award, this collection blazes with colour, music (it comes with a CD) and atmosphere. Sometimes mournful, sometimes amusing, themes range from identity, memory, landscape, nature, the sea, old age, Scottishness, love. This book confirms Kay’s place as one of the most versatile poets writing for children today. (12+)

The All-Nite Café
Philip Gross, Faber (1993), 978 0 571 16753 1, o/p
Gross’s adult work gained proper recognition by winning the T S Eliot Poetry Prize 2010. I hope this award revives interest in his outstanding poetry volumes for young adult readers, such as The All-Nite Café, which was described as an ‘elegant exhibition of craftsmanship’ by judges awarding him the Signal Poetry Prize 1994. Gothic, eerie, where punk mermaids and homeless people keep company with ghost forests and hump-backed whales. Highly recommended. (12+)

* Centre for Literacy in Primary Education

Morag Styles is a Reader in Children’s Literature and Education at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Homerton College. She organised a large international conference on Poetry and Childhood and curated the exhibition ‘Twinkle twinkle little bat! 400 years of poetry for children’ for the British Library.