A Child's Treasury of Irish Rhymes
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover is from The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Poetry (cover illustration by Peter Weevers). Edited by Alison Sage (who also edited The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Literature), this sumptuous anthology is loosely divided into four sections corresponding to age starting with nursery rhymes and first poems through to poems for older children and classic poetry. Poems from such modern poets as Roger McGough, Ted Hughes, Wendy Cope and Maya Angelou sit alongside poems by Longfellow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shelley and Shakespeare. The anthology is illustrated in full colour and black and white. Newly commissioned illustrations from, for example, Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes and Nicola Bayley are included alongside illustrations by Randolph Caldecott, Jessie Willcox Smith and Kate Greenaway. With such a comprehensive range of poems for 2-11 year olds and upwards, this is a wonderful family book.
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A Child's Treasury of Irish Rhymes
Nicola Emoe
In her introduction to this picture book format poetry collection Taylor mentions parents and grandparents and it is to them that this collection is likely to appeal most. The poems and rhymes gathered together are all remembered by Taylor from her childhood in rural Ireland, but it is doubtful that they are all Irish in their origins. It seems unfair to the authors of the poems that they are not given credit on the pages on which their work is quoted; one has to go to the back page to discover this information. Nor is Robin Flower, the translator from Irish of the joyful 'Pangur Ban', given any credit at all. Nevertheless, the selection is pleasant if a trifle twee, and Emoe's illustrations bring a pleasing originality and liveliness to subject matter which is often stereotyped.
