Poems for and by Children, and How to Pass Them Around

Children and poetry—of course they go together. We have all jump-roped and limericked and cursed and, yes, even graffitied our way through childhood in rhyme. The mystery is, why do children and poetry come apart? Who, indeed, killed Cock Robin? Current blame points at the schools; we have many true traumas from the songless to prove how they were "turned off" by six classes of analysis on William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" or Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman." (Insert here a small voice pleading that she liked "The Highwayman," and at age 40 can still recite it. But then, she even liked "Invictus," the dope, so don't listen to her.)

The problem seems to lie not only in the chestnuts and choices, but also in the feeling among many young people in school that poetry is something that is done unto you, rather than something you do, or conjure with. But how does the hard-pressed, textbook-ridden teacher who would like to find new poems and ways of playing with poetry, start? In Pass the Poetry, Please, Lee Bennett Hopkins of Scholastic Magazine has just the thing, a gift to all teachers of lower and middle grades. A resource book, a bibliography, a happy, personal plea, the book offers classroom-tested ideas for getting poems out of the box of a "poetry unit" and into all areas of learning, as well as brief reviews of poems children like and biographies of those who write them. His taste is excellent, and, unlike most "how to" books, this one is a pleasure to read. Here you can find out what a Japanese Senryu is, how kids can write one; you can find listed the anthology that has the most poems about dogs, or how to build a "poetry cube" with beginners. There are thoughts on the effects of Dr. Seuss and Bobby Dylan, and a list of good filmstrips and records available. It is an open-handed, passionately considered accumulation. I'm passing it on to my son's second grade teacher.

But must the schools be responsible for everything? Once kids are confirmed readers, they will simply read what is lying around. And what is lying around is up to parents. Here for consideration are books of poems that look and taste nothing at all like the grim anthologies of my youth, designed to present a gilt-edged tradition to young minds. (And succeeding, mostly.) In general they are colorful, easy to nibble at and handsomely designed.

Eggs Amen!, with verses by John Goldthwaite, is one in an attractive, experimental series put out by Harlin Quist, Inc. In this book, as in others of the series, well-known contemporary artists have contributed individual illustrations, so that one book may have as many as twenty-nine different artists. It is true that the pictures intend to illustrate the verses, and mostly do, but these are primarily picture books whose startling, often surrealistic designs are the greater part of the books' impact. Example...