Children's Poetry

Children's poetry has changed a lot since this one from A Child's Garden of Verses:

A child should always say what's true

And speak when he is spoken to

And behave mannerly at table;

At least as far as he is able.

Through the years, anthologists have struggled with providing poetry appealing to children--some good verse and some bad verse. The question is "Just what kind of poetry is appealing to children?

Shel Silverstein set the pace for those who thought all poetry had to be funny, risque or gross. Then, of course, there were those I Can Read books by Dr.Seuss like One Fish, Two Fish, etc. Jack Prelutsky has become a favorite. One of his is "Willie Ate a Worm Today." My favorite of his I use at Halloween: "The Ghoul". In recent years, poets have felt that children must surely be drawn in by bathroom humor, and so has come the coarsening of children's poetry.

Jane Yolen, Naomi Nye and others have tried to veer the genre away from these off-course rhymes. Yolen has a new book for pre-school and younger children Here's a Little Rhyme. A good Nye book is
The Same Sky: a Collection of Poems from Around the World.