Books For Keeps
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Past Issues
  • Latest Issue
  • Authors and Artists
  • Latest News
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
January 5, 2015/in Poetry 8-10 Junior/Middle /by Angie Hill
BfK Rating:
BfK 210 January 2015
Reviewer: Clive Barnes
ISBN: 978-1847804822
Price: £6.99
Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books
Genre: Poetry
Age Range: 8-10 Junior/Middle
Length: 96pp
Buy the Book

My Life as a Goldfish and other poems

Author: Rachel RooneyIllustrator: Ellie Jenkins

Here is a second collection of poems from the winner of the 2012 CLPE Poetry Prize. Its opening poem, ‘Wide Open’, celebrates the power of the poet’s imagination, and the poems that follow display the power, ingenuity of Rooney’s own ‘magic eye’ as she ponders and plays with a range of subjects and notions, from the rather repetitive life experience of a goldfish to the feelings of a clock on the classroom wall. While there are many poems here that expand on a child’s own experience, like the one that celebrates the properties of a small collection of pebbles, they are most likely to derive from inner thoughts and individual viewpoints rather than collective events. Sometimes funny and often mysterious, they are most often private and idiosyncratic, like the girl who, refusing the blandishments of electric light, microwave and radiator, sits in the dark by the fire toasting a slice of bread or the secret personal treasures revealed in the poem entitled X that marks the spot where the treasures are buried. There are poems about secret friends and the imagined thoughts of animals, about a wolf girl brought in from the cold and (a brilliant one) about a lie as a kind of initially seductive but eventually destructive parasite. There are some joining in poems, it is true, and laugh out loud ones, like the one about a scary teacher that any class will recognise, but the poems that remain in the mind are those you need to take into a quiet corner, wonder at and relish.

 

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png 0 0 Angie Hill http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png Angie Hill2015-01-05 15:43:552021-08-16 15:50:14My Life as a Goldfish and other poems

Search for a specific review

Author Search

Search







Generic filters




Filter by Member Types


Book Author

Download BfK Issue Bfk 272 May 2025
Skip to an Issue:

About Us

Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.

Read More

Follow Us

Latest News

‘Exceptionally talented illustrators’ Shortlist announced for the 2025 Klaus Flugge Prize

May 15, 2025

Next stop Shakespeare’s Globe – finalists of Poetry By Heart competition 2025 announced

May 8, 2025

School Library Association announces Information Book Award longlist and new nationwide Book Club

May 7, 2025

Contact Us

Books for Keeps,
30 Winton Avenue,
London,
N11 2AT

Telephone: 0780 789 3369

ISSN: 0143-909X (this is our International Standard Serial Number).

© Copyright 2025 - Books For Keeps | Proudly Built by Lemongrass Media - Web Design Buckinghamshire
Stonebird The Wrong Side of the Galaxy
Scroll to top