Everybody was a baby once

In his discussion of single poet collections in BfK No. 179, Brian Alderson talked about the importance for such compilations to be ‘what might be called “shaped units” existing as a complete reading experience in themselves rather than as a bundle of the writer’s latest effusions’. He adds: ‘Crucial too are presentational matters…’

In Everybody was a baby once, a small format picture book compilation of 19 Ahlberg poems for the very young interlarded with humorous rhymes from ‘our old pals Trad & Anon’, careful editorial organisation together with very convincing attention to presentational matters in Bruce Ingman’s deceptively child-like drawings result in a coherently designed and deliciously satisfying ‘shaped unit’. The young child’s experience of father (‘When I was just a little child/ The world looked tall to me./ the stairs rose to the mountain tops/ My dad was like a tree.’) and mother (‘My Mum was like a feather bed’) is splendidly evoked as is the child’s amusement and shock at realising that everybody, including their parents, ‘was a baby once’: ‘Life begins with a baby’s cry/ Life begins in a cot/ A little tear in a little eye/ A little bum on a pot.’…‘Everybody went to beddy/ with a little furry teddy./ Everybody… was a baby… once.’

Full of amusing word play and engrossing subjects (monsters, snowmen, sausages, witches), this is a perfectly pitched poetry collection for very young readers poised to venture out into the wider world whilst yet maintaining a toehold in the cosy and familiar world of early childhood experience.