The Folio Book of Children’s Poetry is an eclectic and thought-provoking collection chosen to amuse, entertain and challenge young readers – from classic Wordsworth to the inimitable Dahl.
Switch off the reading light and reveal the glow-in-the-dark binding
The Folio Book of Children’s Poetry
‘It is in poetry that the child discovers the possibilities of language – its range, its flexibility, its infinite variety.’
From Penelope Lively’ introduction
Winner of the 2019 British Book Design and Production Award for Literature
As Penelope Lively says in her insightful introduction: ‘Children savour language – words, new words, unfamiliar words, challenging words’. The 88 poems in this anthology have been carefully selected to introduce younger readers to the infinite possibilities of language through a broad range of themes, all beautifully illustrated by award-winning artist Lesley Barnes.
Production Details
Bound in blocked cloth with glow-in-the-dark varnish Set in Bembo Book with Latin display 192 pages Colour title-page spread and 54 integrated colour illustrations Printed endpapers Blocked slipcase with glow-in-the-dark varnish 10˝ x 7 ½˝
The power of words explored through poetry
The selection includes poetry written specifically for children, by writers including Spike Milligan, Roald Dahl and Russell Hoban, as well as entries chosen to appeal to their naturally enquiring natures. The poems vary dramatically in length, style and subject to engage readers and listeners of all ages and interests – from the epic tales that unfold in Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and Browning’s ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’, to Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ and the quirky single-stanza ‘I Saw Esau’:
I saw Esau sawing wood, And Esau saw I saw him; Though Esau saw I saw him saw, Still Esau went on sawing.
[Anonymous]
Introducing children to wide-ranging topics
The poems cover a broad range of themes – nature, revelation, animals, experiences and morals – and there is light-hearted humour, rhyming and wordplay aplenty. However, the collection doesn’t shy away from challenging themes: grief is subtly referenced in Mary Coleridge’s ‘Gone’; while John McCrae’s ‘In Flanders Fields’ introduces children to war through poignant juxtapositions: ‘The larks, still bravely singing, fly / Scarce heard amid the guns below.’
Alphabetically arranged, the anthology moves fluidly between centuries and styles, from A. E. Housman’s ‘The African Lion’ through to Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Young Lochinvar’. No writer has more than one entry so the collection is wide and varied and offers a wonderful introduction to poetry in a beautiful gifting edition that will be a companion for life.
A treasury for children in a fine edition
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
W. H. Davies, from ‘Leisure’
Our fine edition includes 38 illustrations by Lesley Barnes, an award-winning animator and illustrator whose work appears regularly in children’s magazines Anorak and OKIDO. Motifs and smaller illustrations are woven throughout the poems to visually engage children as they explore the edition, and Barnes has also designed the distinctive animal-themed blocked binding that features glow-in-the-dark varnish. Our collection is introduced by Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively who shares her passion for and extensive knowledge of poetry.
Contents
The African Lion - A. E. Housman The Arrow and the Song - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Bed in Summer - Robert Louis Stevenson A Bird Came Down the Walk - Emily Dickinson Casey at the Bat - Ernest Thayer Casabianca - Felicia Hemans Colour - Christina Rossetti Ducks’ Ditty - Kenneth Grahame The Despot - E. Nesbit The Devil in Texas - Anonymous Eletelephony - Laura E. Richards Eldorado - Edgar Allan Poe Epitaph on a Hare - William Cowper The Elf and the Dormouse - Oliver Herford The Fairies - William Allingham The First Tooth - Charles and Mary Lamb Gone - Mary Coleridge The Garden Year - Sara Coleridge The Hag - Robert Herrick Horrible Song - Ted Hughes Habits of the Hippopotamus - Arthur Guiterman I Saw Esau - Anonymous I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth I Think I Could Turn and Live with Animals - Walt Whitman In Flanders Fields - John McCrae The Ivy Green - Charles Dickens Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Lady of Shalott - Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lake Isle of Innisfree - W. B. Yeats The Law of the Jungle - Rudyard Kipling Leisure - W. H. Davies Lines and Squares - A. A. Milne Little Fish - D. H. Lawrence Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf - Roald Dahl London Snow - Robert Bridges Little Trotty Wagtail - John Clare maggie and milly and molly and may - E. E. Cummings Macavity: The Mystery Cat - T. S. Eliot Matilda - Hilaire Belloc The Migration of the Grey Squirrels - William Howitt Monday’s Child - Anonymous The Mountain and the Squirrel - Ralph Waldo Emerson New Every Morning - Susan Coolidge Night Mail - W. H. Auden
A Night with a Wolf - Bayard Taylor Nightmare - W. S. Gilbert On the Ning Nang Nong - Spike Milligan Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat - Thomas Gray The Owl and the Pussy-Cat - Edward Lear The Owl - Edward Thomas Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley Past, Present, Future - Emily Brontë Patience - Harry Graham Pied Beauty - Gerard Manley Hopkins The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Robert Browning The Railway Children - Seamus Heaney Reindeer Report - U. A. Fanthorpe The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost Round About the Cauldron Go - William Shakespeare Sea Fever - John Masefield Scarborough Fair - Anonymous A Scherzo - Dora Greenwell Seven Times One - Jean Ingelow Sir Smashum Uppe - E. V. Rieu Solomon Grundy - Anonymous The Song of the Mischievous Dog - Dylan Thomas The Spider and the Fly: An Apologue - Mary Howitt The Story of Fidgety Philip - Heinrich Hoffmann Summer Goes - Russell Hoban The Star - Jane Taylor The Tale of Custard the Dragon - Ogden Nash Tartary - Walter de la Mare Timothy Winters - Charles Causley There Isn’t Time - Eleanor Farjeon To a Baked Fish - Carolyn Wells To a Mouse - Robert Burns To Autumn - John Keats To Every Thing a Season - Ecclesiastes True Love - Sir Philip Sidney Topsy-Turvy World - William Brighty Rands The Tyger - William Blake Weathers - Thomas Hardy The Wind and the Moon - George MacDonald The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies - Anonymous Wynken, Blynken, and Nod - Eugene Field Young and Old - Charles Kingsley Young Lochinvar - Sir Walter Scott
About Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for her novels The Road to Lichfield (1977) and According to Mark (1984).She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.
About Lesley Barnes
Lesley Barnes is an award-winning illustrator and animator based in Glasgow. Her distinctive work spans the worlds of fashion, music, children’s literature, film and product design. Barnes has created exclusive product ranges for the V&A and Tate museums in London. Other clients include Scottish band Belle & Sebastian, Clinique, Glamour magazine, Sunday Times Style, Random House, Puffin Books, and children’s magazines Anorak and OKIDO. She is the author and illustrator of three children’s books.
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