Squeak! Squawk! Roar!

Kate Williams’ poems have been appearing in children’s anthologies for some years and this is her first collection. It’s very good value, with over ninety pages of poems about animals of many shapes, habitats and characters, with a lot of appeal to KS2 children and more than a few poems that might go down well with younger ones. Often the poems home in on personality traits. The elephant sulks because he doesn’t have the giraffe’s elegance. The hippo’s not keen on getting clean.  In one poem, we observe how a cat approaches life and, in the next, a dog tells us what he thinks of that. Sometimes character is the basis of word play. The ‘chimpantease’ who throws bananas. The rhinoceros who is ‘crosseros.’ The wombat who is ‘no bat’ (one I particularly like). And the alliterative lion who lazily lounges, languidly looking at you and licking his lips. There’s plenty of music in the rhymes and the occasional invitation to bop with the rabbits or ‘step, hop, wobble, skid’ with the penguins. There are riddles, too, but not too challenging. Then, there are poems that step away from the humour and, even at a relatively simple level, provoke deeper thought. Why is a mouse in the meadow a charming sight and in the larder really alarming? We follow a hedgehog as he navigates the obstacle course we have made of his nocturnal search for food. We learn why an elephant insistently trumpets ‘Mine!’ about his tusks. This is an attractive collection, tailored craftily for its audience, which should be enjoyed both by the individual young poetaster and in the classroom, especially if delivered by the poet herself on her school visits. Hannah Asen’s illustrations strike exactly the right note.