Off to School
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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.
Off to School
Tony Bradman
Blundell's wacky illustrations might give the impression that this picture book format poetry collection with a school theme is wholly light-hearted. However, the two dozen poems, which feature beginnings, endings and times in between, have a variety of moods. There are thoughtful poems such as Errol Lloyd's 'The Late Worm' and Benjamin Zephaniah's 'Confessions of a Runner' - his picture of a teacher 'stuck in red tape' is powerfully pertinent. I particularly like the idea of not reducing everything to the wholly rational in Eileen Round's 'Science is Magic'. Then there are the hopeful voices of Wendy Cope's 'Word-Watching' and the artist of Ad?le Geras' 'Katy's Picture'. I am sure many readers will empathise with Helen Dunmore's portrayal of the lone child waiting to be collected and growing increasingly fearful when 'All the voices have gone'. Almost exclusively new poems these, there should be something to appeal to most listeners or readers from around six.