Books - reviews and literary news from The Times and The Sunday Times
Amanda Craig reviews some recent children's poetry collections, objecting to some - either on the grounds that the poems included will appeal to adults but not to children, or because they have been selected to act as First-Aid For Parents (the subtitle of one of the books reviewed) - and liking best the collections put together by poets:
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 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.
