The best time to read poetry to children is not at school, however, but when they are relaxed, receptive and unable to make a dash for freedom: ie, in the bath. I have a tower of poetry collections, ranging from Walter de la Mare’s famous Come Hither to Michael Morpurgo’s Because a Fire Was in My Head, and they are in suprising demand (once my electric cattle prod has been put to good use).
This autumn several more have been published. For children of 4+, Carol Ann Duffy’s reinvention of The Night Before Christmas is a delight — though you should first buy the original, gloriously illustrated by Christian Birmingham (HarperCollins, £5.99, offer £5.69), to enjoy fully the jokes.
In Another Night Before Christmas (John Murray, £9.99, offer £9.49), Duffy has a child “just like a mouse” creeping downstairs to try to find out whether Santa is real, for: “There were some who said no, he was really just Mum./ With big cushions or pillow to plump out her tum.” Needless to say, Santa does turn out to exist. What is exquisitely enjoyable is the way that Duffy uses the same metre but gives the words a good shake to include wry asides about modern celebrity culture, the inability of “a faraway satellite dish to see miracles” as “its eye’s empty socket films famine and greed”.
Even more striking is the way that Duffy uses religious imagery to point up our culture of faithlessness and materialism. A child who is told that “cashpoints glowed softly like icons of light” may not know what a religious icon is, but once this is explained it becomes as unforgettable as the two aeroplanes speeding “to the east and the west/ like a pulled Christmas cracker”.
The innocent hopefulness of the child, despite the cynicism of the adult world, makes this almost too poignant to read, especially in contrast with Clement Moore’s jolly old original, but Duffy’s genius and wit makes it a must-have, even if the dorky pictures make it unlikely to become an annual favourite.
Children do not enjoy reading about their own condition, and Michael Donaghy’s 101 Poems About Childhood (Faber, £12.99, offer £11.69) is a case in point. This is one of the most original and effective themed collections I have come across, starting with the passage about Hector removing his helmet for his baby son in The Iliad, and finishing with the last line of Kate Clanchy’s Mitigation, “the short, sharp slaps/ of grown-ups clamouring to get back”. Predictable old favourites, such as Thomas Hood’s “I remember, I remember", Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill and D. H. Lawrence’s Piano, mingle with less familiar poems by Rilke, Roethke and Edith Södergran. All present childhood as a time of bliss, and almost none of them will therefore interest an actual child. Buy it for yourself, and not your little ones.
What children do enjoy is more along the lines of Simon Bartram’s Watch Out for Sprouts! (Templar, £9.99, offer £9.49), which is all his own work. As the poems focus on lavatory humour and are accompanied by his rumbustious, Mad-magazine-style pictures, they are a hit with boys of 6 to 10.
If you think that yours will enjoy verses such as “Barry Doom and Gavin Gloom/ Sat inside their murky room/ Pondering impending doom/ Until sure enough the world went . . .”, then don’t hesitate.
Here are verses telling Tarzan to become a New Man, and warning boys to beware of girls and toilets that bite your bum. My children have been inseparable from it at mealtimes.
Daisy Goodwin’s Essential Poems for Children (Harpercollins, £10.99, offer £9.89) is subtitled “First Aid for Frantic Parents”, and presents poetry as a sort of Bach’s Rescue Remedy. I dislike this approach intensely, and her introduction, descanting on how “for me, poetry is a dressing-up box to be played with, not an exam-tinged cupboard under the stairs” emphasises its coy commerciality.
Even so, there is a handful of good ones by obscure poets who are worth looking out for — Jack Prelutsky’s Never Never Disagree is short enough to memorise and will raise a laugh, and there are lashings of Spike Milligan in among traditional favourites by Christina Rosetti and Hilaire Belloc.
The best collections of poetry are inevitably made by poets, and while both The Rattle Bag and Charles Causley’s collection for Macmillan are equally essential, the next best is The New Faber Book of Children’s Verse (£16.99, offer £15.29) edited by Matthew Sweeney. This is not new (it has been around since 2001) but has been reissued by the publishers to be in the shops for Christmas.
I don’t much care for the illustrations by Sarah Fanelli, but what is so good about this refreshingly astringent collection is the freshness of much of the material — Sweeney has looked out for “poems written for adults that I felt would speak to children”, and they do.
Roethke again makes several appearances; there is a grisly poem, The Fly, by Miroslav Holub, which instantly appeals to the ruthless side of children, and particularly fine poems by Roger McGough, Charles Causley and Shel Silverstein (whose most famous book, A Light in the Attic, has recently been republished by Marion Boyars), among others.
One would not wish to be deprived of the magical language of traditional collections, but here are children being bullied, discovering aliens, feeling lonely and yearning not for their own childhood but for what will help them to escape its powerlessness and boredom. If poetry such as this could reach the new generation, they might feel it has something to say to them after all.
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What's more
LAVENDER'S BLUE
ed Kathleen Lines
OUP; £14.99
Most child-friendly nursery rhyme treasury, thanks to exquisite colour illustrations by Harold Jones. For 6+
THE OXFORD NURSERY RHYME BOOK
edited by Iona and Peter Opie
OUP; £16.99
Best collection, illustrated by Joan Hassall. For 3+
THE MACMILLAN TREASURY OF POETRY FOR CHILDREN
edited by Charles Causley
Macmillan; £25
Excellent colour illustrations by Diz Wallis on every page, and poems collected by theme. The best possible introduction to poetry. For 5+
THE NATION’S FAVOURITE CHILDREN’S POEMS
BBC; £10.99
A jolly collection, well illustrated, with good dragon poems. For 7+
THE RATTLE BAG
edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney
Faber; £14.99
For when you can make pictures in your head and hear the music of the spheres. For 9+
