Children's poetry

Four children reading Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Children's poetry is poetry written for, or appropriate for children. This may include folk poetry (for example, Mother Goose rhymes); poetry written intentionally for young people (e.g. Shel Silverstein); poetry written originally for adults, but appropriate for young people (Ogden Nash); and poems taken from prose works (Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling).

Notable Children's Poets

• Dr. Seuss - Wrote many Children's poetry books including The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
• Robert Louis Stevenson - Author of such works as A Child's Garden of Verses.
• Shel Silverstein - Author of such works as Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic, Silverstein also wrote The Giving Tree.
• Jack Prelutsky (born 1940) - Author of such works as A Gopher in the Garden and Other Animal Poems, Jack Prelutsky was selected the inaugural Children's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2006.
• Michael Rosen is a broadcaster, children's novelist and poet and the author of 140 books. He was appointed as the fifth Children's Laureate in June 2007, succeeding Jacqueline Wilson, and held this honour till 2009.
• Roald Dahl (1916–1990) is one of the most successful children's writers in the world: around thirty million of his books have been sold in the UK alone. Dahl's collection of poems Revolting Rhymes is a re-interpretation of six well-known fairy tales, featuring surprise endings in place of the traditional happily-ever-after.^[1] Dahl's poems and stories are popular among Children because he writes from their point of view - in his books adults are often the villains or are just plain stupid!.^[1]
• Valerie Bloom Valerie was born in 1956, first came to England in 1979, and is now based in Kent, but continues to travel around the UK and abroad adding to her thousands of performances, workshops and school visits.
• Brian Moses (born 1950) is one of Britain's favourite children's poets, for both his own poetry and the anthologies he has edited, and he has performed in over two thousand schools across the UK and Europe. He is a Reading Champion for the Literacy Trust.
• Roger Stevens is a performance poet, author, musician and artist. His poems have appeared in more than one hundred anthologies.
• Gez Walsh is a performance poet and stand-up comedian best known as the author of the cult classic children's poetry book "The Spot on my Bum".
• Allan Ahlberg (born 1938) is one of Britain's best-loved children's writers. The author of over a hundred books.
• Jean Sprackland (born 1962) is an English poet, the author of three collections of poetry published since 1997.
• Shepherd Thorleif Halvorsen (born 1959) - Author of The Bridge Across The River, a collection of poems for children.

Further reading

• Brewton, John Edmund. Index to Poetry for Children and Young People, 1964–1969. New York: Wilson, 1972.
• Index to Poetry for Children and Young People, 1976–1981. New York: Wilson, 1981.
• Sell, Violet, Dorothy B. Frizzell Smith, Ardis Sarff O’Hoyt, and Mildred Bakke. Subject Index to Poetry for Children and Young People. Chicago: American Library Association, 1957, ISBN 0-8389-0242-1.

References

1. Once upon a time, there was a man who liked to make up stories ... The Independent (Sunday, 12 December 2010)

External links

• http://www.freebase.com/view/en/childrens_poetry
• http://www.rainydaypoems.com
• http://meadowviewbooks.blogspot.co.uk/