Difference between revisions of "Newest Children's Rhymes and Verse Reviews"

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[[Category:Children's Rhymes and Verse|*]]
 
[[Category:Children's Rhymes and Verse|*]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Children's Rhymes and Verse]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Elli Woollard
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|isbn=0995647895
|title=The Secret Pirate (Swashbuckle Lil: The Secret Pirate)  
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|title=Sadie and the Sea Dogs
 +
|author=Maureen Duffy and Anita Joice
 +
|rating=3.5
 +
|genre=For Sharing
 +
|summary=Sadie's mother always said that she was a dreamer, her mind never on what she should be doing.  She lives by the River Thames at Greenwich and she loves to spend hours at The Maritime Museum or gazing at Cutty Sark.
 +
 
 +
''Her class had gone one rainy afternoon''<br>
 +
''When all the houses cowered in the gloom,''<br>
 +
''To the Maritime Museum''.
 +
 +
Her imagination was fired.  She'd love to sail the oceans on an ancient sailing ship and went back regularly.  One day she fell asleep under a glass case (it's the one where Nelson's Trafalgar breeches are on show) and missed the closing bell and the attendant's warning shout.  When she woke (hard floors don't make comfy beds) she was in the midst of an adventure that she could never have imagined in a world of dolphins, pirates, mermaids and treasure.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=Esiri Poem
 +
|title=A Poem for Every Day of the Year
 +
|author=Allie Esiri
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre= Emerging Readers
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|genre=Anthologies
|summary= School girl Lil is a secret pirate. Her classmates think she's an ordinary girl and assume they're just imagining things when they hear her bag squawk. They don't know that's where she keeps her parrot (whose name is Carrot). Her teacher, Miss Lubber, thinks Lil's naughty and is unaware that Lil's really trying to save the teacher from being kidnapped by the wicked pirate, Stinkbeard. But Lil doesn't mind because she knows the truth – she's a bold and brave pirate and all her adventures are true (at least to her).
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|summary=For those who do not read much poetry, for those who do not know where to start, this is a fun and easy commitment to take on. Reading a poem a day does not take long, mere minutes, and with over three-hundred poems in here there's bound to be a poem that speaks to each reader directly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1509808825</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Gavin Puckett and Tor Freeman
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|isbn=Stevenson_Garden
|title=Hendrix the Rocking Horse (Fables from the Stables 2)
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|title=A Child's Garden of Verses
|rating=5
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|author=Robert Louis Stevenson
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
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|rating=2
|summary=Poor Hendrix.  He has a nice life and a nice farmer's field, but he's bored.  All the excitement of the world is just too far away, except for the time the fairground came to town, complete with Ferris wheel, rides, stilted jugglers and the Tumbling Pebbles playing a gig. He could hear all of their concert – even dancing and prancing around his field as a result.  But little did he know what would happen when the lead guitarist's instrument literally fell off the back of their tour bus, and Hendrix had a chance to find the music within…
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|genre=Anthologies
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571315402</amazonuk>
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|summary=Robert Louis Stevenson was a very versatile writer; he delved deep into the human psyche when he wrote ''The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde'' but he did not restrict himself to representations of the gothic and the persecuted. He also wrote brilliant children's adventure stories such as ''Treasure Island'' and ''Kidnapped'', but, again, he did not restrict himself to prose writing because here he demonstrates his ability to write poetry.
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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|author=Julia Donaldson and Lucy Richards
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{{Frontpage
|title=Night Monkey, Day Monkey
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|isbn=Donaldson_Treasury
|rating=5
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|title=A Treasury of Songs
 +
|author=Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=A night monkey should only be awake in the night.  A day monkey should only be awake in the day. They should never have to experience the 'wrong' side of their routine. But what happens when they each in turn wake the other up, and night monkey has to suffer the brightness of day, and the day monkey the spooky life without sunlight?  Well this lovely book is what happens – proof positive that despite the old adage, polar opposites can be a twain that can meet – and just about get along perfectly well, thank you.
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|summary=Some people have all the skills, not only is Julia Donaldson one of the most successful children's authors, but she can also carry a tune. For the past few years, she has adapted many of her most popular stories into songs and plays them during open readings, or releases them as part of a songbook. For the first time, A Treasury of Songs brings together several of her books in one omnibus and it also has a CD too of Donaldson singing the songs.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405283343</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Pip Jones
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|isbn=Woollard_Kipling
|title=Squishy McFluff: Seaside Rescue!
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|title=Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories
 +
|author=Elli Woollard and Marta Altes
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre= Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary= Ava and her invisible cat – Squishy McFluff – are off to the seaside for their latest adventure together. They have great fun digging in the sand towards Australia and sitting on the beach eating ice cream. (Although the adults who fall in their hole and the ice cream man may not share their enthusiasm.) Everything is purr-fect until invisible cat Squishy decides to chase an invisible fish. Now it's up to Ava to stage a 'seaside rescue'…
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571320686</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=A A Milne and E H Shepard
 
|title=Now We Are Six
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=We can see the signs in [[The House at Pooh Corner by A A Milne and E H Shepard|The House at Pooh Corner]] that Christopher Robin is growing up and now he has school work to do. But he's a lucky little boy as he has Winnie the Pooh to help him.  Or is he lucky, given that Winnie is also known as 'the Bear of very little brain'?  Actually, Pooh has a message for us in the introduction: he says that he walked through the book one day, looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages by mistake.  He hopes that we won't mind.
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|summary=Now, whatever our age, there are probably a few books that we have all encountered at some point in our childhoods. They have stood the test of time to such an extent that they have become a piece of our culture common to so many of us, and are known throughout the world. One of them is by Rudyard Kipling, who brought a child's sense of wonder and his own Victorian absurdist set of explanations to play in a dozen examples of warm whimsy. In shrugging off evolution he got to convey how the rhino skin is so ill-fitting and rumpled, how the whale learnt he cannot eat humans, and how the elephant got such a thing as his trunk. In doing so he entertained his young daughter, not knowing she would die as a child long before he produced a book-length collection – and way before he saw something into print that has lasted ever since. Just in case these tales are not for your young audience yet (and it won't be long, trust me), you can start them in early with this lovely and bright adaptation.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405280867</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=A A Milne and E H Shepard
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|isbn=Harris_Rhyming
|title=When We Were Very Young
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|title=I'm Just No Good At Rhyming: And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups
|rating=5
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|author=Chris Harris and Lane Smith
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=I've never been fond of poetry: there's something missing in my soul as I cannot see the benefits of saying something in verse form when it could be expressed more simply.  I often wish that I was different and just occasionally some verse will touch me: it has happened with [[:Category:Wendy Cope|Wendy Cope]] and now with this delightful volume from A A Milne.  As I read there was a curious mixture of ''good'' memories from childhood (and they were all too rare) and new material which struck a chord. The 'decorations' by E H Shepard didn't do any harm either!
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|summary=In the sniffy world of literary poetry, people seem to be able to knock together a dozen verses and get an audience of twenty people to buy a pamphlet, and they call themselves published authors. You get a similar thing at times with poetry for the young – most poetry books, after all, have a lot more blank space in them than routine volumes, and people compile their best arrays of very few words in between two covers and bingo, they have a book, and twenty minutes later bingo, you've read it. That's most certainly not the case here, for this is crammed with what has to be considered a major outpouring of wit and rhyme. And whatever age you are, and whatever experience with verse you may have, this will not seem to you like someone's first book of poetry.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1405280859</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Clement C Moore and Max Marshall
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|isbn=Goss_600
|title= The Night Before Christmas
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|title=Doctor Who: Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse (Dr Who)
|rating= 5
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|author=James Goss and Russell T Davies
|genre= Children's Rhymes and Verse
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|rating=4.5
|summary= Everyone knows the classic story of the night before Christmas, but as a child I never had it in a standalone book like this and, it seems, I never knew there was quite as much to the tale. If you don't already own a version, this new release is a must buy for the presentation alone.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848959125</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author= Roger Stevens
 
|title=I Wish I had a Pirate Hat
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=I was worried, initially, that all these poems were going to be about pirates. How would Roger Stevens keep the interest going if he was confined to the staple diet of treasure maps and skull and cross bones? In fact there are only three pirate poems but they are the first three and the book cover gives little indication of the variety within. ''I Wish I had a Pirate Hat'' contains forty five poems grouped into Fun Time, School Time, Home Time. No poem is longer than a page and there’s sufficient range of form and tone to keep one reading. There’s also sufficient consistency to allow one to drop in at random and with confidence.
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|summary=Consider the Doctor. Just how many birthday and Christmas gifts must he have to hand out each year, were he to keep in touch with even half of his companions? He would certainly need a few novelty gifts for some of them, say, for example, whimsical books of verse that pithily encapsulate the life of a Time Lord and that of some of his friends and enemies. As luck would have it, he has space in his TARDIS to stock up in advance, so my advice to him – sorry, her – would be to pop along to his local Earth-based book emporium and get himself ready. And if you're working on a shorter timescale, with a shorter lifespan, and thinking perhaps just one gift season ahead, well my advice is pretty much the same.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184780618X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Jules Nilsson
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|isbn=0956503527
|title=The Hounds of Falsterbo
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|title=There's A Lion In My Bathroom
|rating=4
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|author=Giles Paley-Phillips
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=''In between the beach huts''<br>
 
''Where the white sands meet the seas,''<br>
 
''The heather meets the sand dunes''<br>
 
''And long grasses dance the breeze.''
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992708419</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tony Ross
 
|title=Bedtime Rhymes
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=It is getting late so it is time to start the bedtime routine; upstairs for a wash, clean your teeth and then into your PJs. Settle into bed and what now?  A story perhaps, or some night time nursery rhymes. Is it just me or do many of these bedtime tales feel a lot more sinister than their daytime cousins?
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|summary=This collection of nonsense poetry takes in all sorts of subjects, from wannabe magicians to armpits, and from failed cowboys to a girl with springs for feet. It's all very silly, all very nonsensical, and good fun. A proportion of profits are being donated to [http://www.beatbloodcancers.org/ Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research].
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783440473</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Tony Ross
+
|isbn=0192731831
|title=Playtime Rhymes
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|title=See You Later, Escalator
 +
|author=John Foster
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=Great news!  Your friends are having a baby!  That pretty much means that everybody you know has at least one or two rug rats crawling around the place.  It’s all well and good, but how can you possibly come up with another present for a baby?  Thankfully, great books and wonderful nursery rhymes are always in fashion – combine the two and you have a gift that you may just want to keep for yourself.
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|summary=Always a sucker for a good poetry anthology here at Bookbag, we've enjoyed two previous collections from John Foster. ''See You Later, Escalator'' continues in the same vein, with poems from the likes of Tony Mitton, Michael Rosen, Michelle Magorian and Brian Patten.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783440481</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Roger McGough, Michael Rosen and Korky Paul (illustrator)
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|isbn=1849392021
|title=You Tell Me!
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|title=There's An Alien In The Classroom
|rating=2.5
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|author=Gervase Phinn
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
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|rating=3.5
|summary=All life can be in poetry – the hectic schedule of a person forever popping somewhere, the policeman living in a world of bad puns, an uncle who may or not have brought memories of sniper fire back from war. All of life it seems on this evidence can be poetry – football results, memoir, advice to counter bullies. All people in this life can be poets – and the way I reacted to a lot of this collection, perhaps it's just as well.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847804446</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Danielle Wright (editor) and Mique Moriuchi (illustrator)
 
|title=My Village: Rhymes from Around the World
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=I'm thinking that of all the kinds of books that have ability to surprise, high up on the list are poetry books.  You can generally see the style, idea or genre of a novel from the cover, and beyond a few shocks and twists nothing changes.  But take poetry on board, and there are surprises on each page – the concentrated form of the literature surely gives the author more chance to bedazzle, to pull the rug over the readers' eyes and to generally give something the audience didn't expect.  And so it is with this book, for while [[:Category:Michael Rosen|Michael Rosen's]] introduction spoke to us of nursery rhymes, I had already flicked through and still was not expecting a spread of them.  Even when he itemised the various kinds I didn't foresee finding them all on the pages, although that is what I got.  Who would have thought that such a small, succinct and varied little volume would have that much capacity to surprise?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847806279</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Walter de la Mare
 
|title=Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=It was a surprise for me to read online that Walter de la Mare spent so much of his life in and around London – born at least in what is now the borough of Greenwich, passing away in Twickenham. The reason I say this is that out of the copious poems collected here, it's as if cities don't exist. Hardly anything of the subjects is manmade. The concentration is fully on the idyllic and pastoral, and in following on so closely in the footsteps of his debut collection, 'Songs of Childhood' from 1902, still very, very much Victorian.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571313892</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Evangeline Lilly and Johnny Fraser-Allen
 
|title=The Squickerwonkers
 
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=Selma is a young girl who finds a strange attraction on the edge of a fair – a large gypsy caravan-styled contraption, which she enters, alone but for her shiny red balloon. She appears to be alone, until nine marionette puppets suddenly appear on the stage within, and a disembodied voice introduces them all to her.  They are the Squickerwonkers, and as we are about to see, they can reveal someone's entire character with the simplest of actions…
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|summary=''There's An Alien In The Classroom'' is a collection of school-based poems and poems aimed at school-age children. Taking in all forms, from limericks and cautionary verse to acrostics and haiku, it offers a broad overview of poetry. With themes including school, families, seasons, Bonfire Night, Nativity plays and going to the dentist, there's something to appeal to every child.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783295457</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The Illustrated Old Possum
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|isbn=1408304589
|author=T S Eliot and Nicolas Bentley
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|title=The Orchard Book Of Nursery Rhymes For Your Baby
|rating=4
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|author=Penny Dann
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=This title is clearly of importance to the house of Faber.  To this day their puff mentions it was one of their first childrens' books, after the author sent his publisher's son, his godson, some writings based on jellicle cats and some of their scrapes.  It's clearly a book that's important to Andrew Lloyd Webber, too, but we'll gloss speedily over that.  It's a book that was important to me as well – I certainly had a copy, a thin, barely illustrated, old-fashioned style paperback of it once I had seen the musical.  And with the excellent writing here and the ability of it to delight so many people of so many ages, it has the power to be important to a future generation.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571313086</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Nonsense Limericks (Faber Children's Classics)
 
|author=Edward Lear and Arthur Robins (illustrator)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=There was a young man whose critique<br>
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|summary=All your favourite nursery rhymes are here, from Hickory Dickory Dock, through Little Bo Peep and Three Blind Mice, to Sing A Song Of Sixpence. With over sixty nursery rhymes to choose from, all the big names are presented in a beautiful compendium that you'll treasure for years.
Of this book was submitted one week<br>
 
When they asked 'Was it fine?'<br>
 
He said 'No denyin' –<br>
 
'There's very little here they could tweak!'
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571302262</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Owl and the Pussy-cat
 
|author=Edward Lear, Charlotte Voake and Julia Donaldson
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=This is a poem which has always resonated with me, because there is something about it which is nothing short of magical. It taps into that part of children which still love nursery rhymes, or to pretend they fly to the moon when they go to sleep. This edition is beautifully laid out, and I would happily buy it in a heartbeat.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>072329321X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Seen and Not Heard
 
|author=Katie May Green
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=During the day the eight children of Shiverhawk Hall are seen and not heard for they are images captured on canvas. 'Don’t they look so sweet and good, so well behaved like children should?' They certainly look a picture, picked out in the silvery moonlight. As night sets in and all is quiet, only the black cat and a handful of mice are there to see the portraits come to life and step out of their frames. What mischief can these children from across the ages make?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406346519</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=The It Doesn't Matter Suit and Other Stories
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|isbn=0141324511
|author=Sylvia Plath and David Roberts
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|title=Michael Rosen's Big Book of Bad Things
 +
|author=Michael Rosen
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=I've said it before and I'll say it again, that you should always approach classical authors through their least typical, shortest and more individual works – you won't gain much insight perhaps into why they were famous, but you will find more entertainment and greater pleasures by staying outside the canon.  And the lovely people at Faber and Faber have a case in point – rather than plough through serious dross from Eliot, why not stick to [[The Illustrated Old Possum by T S Eliot and Nicolas Bentley]]?  And with Sylvia Plath I cannot think of a better place to start with her oeuvre than with these snappy and delightful pages.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571314643</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Over the Hills and Far Away
 
|author=Elizabeth Hammill (Editor)
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=I’m a bit picky on behalf of my toddler.  See the word ‘Treasury’ and I expect him to be treated to a volume he will want to pass on to his own children. Anything less and I am disappointed. I’m relieved to get one thing straight from the start. This one’s a gem -  a gorgeous joy of a book that you will just want to keep opening again and again. It’s not a question of whether it is worthy of hypothetical grandchildren, it’s more a question of how well thumbed it will be when they get it.
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|summary=When he was little, Michael Rosen's dad remembered all the bad things he'd done and reminded him of them when appropriate, so Michael imagined he'd written them all down in a Big Book of Bad Things. Here he presents the eponymous poem, as well as many many other tales of childhood, from the horrors of being a second late to school, to making a raft, to going to a café. Some bad, some sad, some quirky, some funny, some touching, some light-hearted, all wonderful.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847804063</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=What A Wonderful World
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|isbn=033051086X
|author=Bob Thiele, George David Weiss and Tim Hopgood
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|title=The World At Our Feet
 +
|author=Paul Cookson
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=''What a Wonderful World'' is a book and accompanying CD set based on the Louis Armstrong song. In fact it is the book and CD of that song as it’s not a new story or a padded out version of the original, it’s simply an illustrated version of the lyrics.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192736906</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Twelve Days of Christmas
 
|author=Britta Teckentrup
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=You know the song already, but this peep-through book recreates the magic of the ''Twelve Days of Christmas'' in a beautiful and special way.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848958862</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Oxford Treasury of Nursery Rhymes
 
|author=Sarah Williams and Karen King
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=When it comes to nursery rhymes, what you learn at your Mother’s knee as a baby is gospel. Recently I have expanded my repertoire courtesy of Cheshire libraries excellent rhyme time activities, but at heart I still can't quite come to terms with the librarian saying 'washed ''the spider'' out as opposed to my mum’s washed ''poor Incey'' out'.  Sadly, Williams’ and King’s compendium ''The Oxford Treasury of Nursery Rhymes'' doesn’t take my Mum’s side in this.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192738666</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Mad About Mega Beasts!
 
|author=Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz (Illustrator)
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=When I was small I was fascinated with things that were big; big buildings, big vehicles, big animals.  However, I have recently learnt that there is a size that is bigger than big – mega.  What beasts, both from now and from the past, are large enough to achieve this accolade and be welcomed into the hallowed pages of this book?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408329352</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=A is Amazing!: Poems about Feelings
 
|author=Wendy Cooling and Piet Grobler
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=How do you get young children interested in poetry?  I guess you hope that you don't have to – you want them to be aware of clapping and skipping songs by nature, and of lyrics to music heard in school and at home.  Surely it's a case of making sure a child never learns to hold verse in disfavour, and carries a natural eagerness for poetry through to adulthood.  But just in case, there are books such as this wonderfully thought-through compilation, that will catch the eye and entertain those aged six or seven and up, and provide for many a read of many a different style of verse.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847805132</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Kicking A Ball
 
|author=Allan Ahlberg
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=There is a boy who likes kicking a ball. It’s the best thing of all for him, and there’s nothing he’d rather be doing, nowhere he’d rather be. We see his bedroom and this has some football albums in, and a football table, but his interest is definitely with playing rather than being on the side lines. There are other ball sports too, of course, but he’s not into tennis or volleyball or golf or cricket or hockey or netball or playing catch with a child in a wheelchair (nice touch). No, kicking a ball is where it’s at.
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|summary=With the World Cup just around the corner, football is on everyone's lips. Paul Cookson, Poet in Residence at the [http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/ National Football Museum], has compiled the best football poems for young children.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0723271208</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Macavity,the Mystery Cat
 
|author=T S Eliot and Arthur Robins
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=There’s nothing my little boy likes more than to sit down with a tome of good poetry. Currently he is reading T.S. Eliot. Well, that’s what I will be telling them down at playgroup anyway. No need to add that it’s not ‘The Wasteland’. The poem in this volume is actually just one from ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ and features the inimitable scoundrel of the title, ''Macavity''.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571308139</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|title=Squishy McFluff: the Invisible Cat!
+
|isbn=0192729934
|author=Pip Jones
+
|title=Whizz Bang Orang-Utan
 +
|author=John Foster
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=Meet Ava.  She's a girl of great imagination and a big heart, who brings an invisible cat home to mum one day, who humours Ava by feeding it invisible food and letting the two bond.  But when mess gets made, and mistakes about the house happen, Ava declares innocence, and blames it all on the cat – and you'd be surprised how many accidents can be the result of having an invisible kitten indoors…
+
|summary=Subtitled ''rhymes for the very young'', you know what you're getting with ''Whizz Bang Orang-Utan''. It's a poetry anthology, with sweet poems about kids, what they get up to, and of course whizzing and banging orang-utans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571302505</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=What Does the Fox Say?
 
|author=Ylvis and Svein Nyhus
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=I know an 18 month old who is ace at animal noises. He knows what the cat who lives with him says, but also knows what dogs say and monkeys say and owls say and cows say. I’ve not asked him if he knows was foxes say, but I imagine he doesn’t. I mean, do you?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471121941</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=I am a Poetato
 
|author=John Hegley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|summary=In this collection John Hegley says that poetry is like music in that to understand it 'sometimes…you need more than one go at it'. There is certainly more going on with John Hegley’s poems than a first read through reveals.  So though 'I am a Poetato' has been published as a book for children, these are poems for everyone and contain a lot for readers of any age to enjoy.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847803970</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|title=Miss Dorothy-Jane Was Ever So Vain
+
|isbn=0230745865
|author=Julie Fulton and Jona Jung
+
|title=In My Sky at Twilight
 +
|author=Gaby Morgan (editor)
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=Miss Dorothy-Jane is very much obsessed with her appearance, so when she sees there’s a competition to find Hamilton Shady’s best lady she just has to enter! She spends ever such a long time perfecting her look but on the way to the contest, disaster strikes. Will she realise that there’s more to life than looks, and sacrifice her chance to win a meet and greet with the Queen (yes, her Majesty!)? Can she do the right thing, even if she gets all dirty and dishevelled in the process? I’m sure you can guess the outcome, but the final ending was a surprise, even for me. A nice surprise, I should add.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848861060</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak?
 
|author=Alison Green and Adam Stower
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=You might be wondering why anyone would want to stack anything on the back of a yak, but the answer is simple. In this adorable tale, Captain Quack and the Yak (you’ve guessed it, this is a rhyming one) deliver post to the top of a mountain.  Along the way the Yak likes to play, and, well, deviate from the track, and no matter how hard he tries, Captain Quack cannot control him. Uh oh. One day, the Yak ends up with a rather more interesting load than his usual parcels and boxes and sacks.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1407135724</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Counting Sheep: A Bedtime Adventure!
 
|author=Kathryn Cave and Chris Riddell
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
 
|genre=Children's Rhymes and Verse
|summary=Tom is supposed to be asleep. He’s been tucked up in bed for ages, so long in fact that it’s now mum and dad’s time to go to sleep, but he’s still wide awake. Just count some sheep, his mum says finally. But what should be a calming, boring, wind down activity that would put any sane person to sleep does not work for Tom. Because when the sheep come, they steal him off for a bedtime adventure.
+
|summary=Off the back of the success of Stephenie Meyer's [[Twilight by Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]] series there has been a boom in vampire novels aimed at teenagers. In My Sky at Twilight is perhaps one of the most unusual books to come out of this craze as it is a collection of love poetry aimed at teenage fans of the series.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847804802</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Where's Tim's Ted? It's Time for Bed!
 
|author=Ian Whybrow and Russell Ayto
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=For Sharing
 
|summary=Tim is visiting Grandad and Granny Red on the farm. It’s bed time, but Tim can’t find Ted. He makes them look for him, but they don’t really bother. Just a perfunctory peek behind the sofa and, when that doesn’t unearth the teddy, Tim is packed off to bed with the promise that they’ll look again in the morning. But it’s hard to sleep without your toy, isn’t it? So, deep in the middle of the night, Tim creeps out of bed to go searching once more. He’s not alone, though. Grandad and Granny Red might be fast asleep but others on the farm are awake, and like the Pied Piper, Tim soon finds himself with quite a following.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007509561</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Confident Readers Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 09:00, 21 April 2021

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Review of

Sadie and the Sea Dogs by Maureen Duffy and Anita Joice

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Sadie's mother always said that she was a dreamer, her mind never on what she should be doing. She lives by the River Thames at Greenwich and she loves to spend hours at The Maritime Museum or gazing at Cutty Sark.

Her class had gone one rainy afternoon
When all the houses cowered in the gloom,
To the Maritime Museum.

Her imagination was fired. She'd love to sail the oceans on an ancient sailing ship and went back regularly. One day she fell asleep under a glass case (it's the one where Nelson's Trafalgar breeches are on show) and missed the closing bell and the attendant's warning shout. When she woke (hard floors don't make comfy beds) she was in the midst of an adventure that she could never have imagined in a world of dolphins, pirates, mermaids and treasure. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Esiri Poem/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

A Poem for Every Day of the Year by Allie Esiri

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For those who do not read much poetry, for those who do not know where to start, this is a fun and easy commitment to take on. Reading a poem a day does not take long, mere minutes, and with over three-hundred poems in here there's bound to be a poem that speaks to each reader directly. Full Review

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Review of

A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Robert Louis Stevenson was a very versatile writer; he delved deep into the human psyche when he wrote The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde but he did not restrict himself to representations of the gothic and the persecuted. He also wrote brilliant children's adventure stories such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but, again, he did not restrict himself to prose writing because here he demonstrates his ability to write poetry. Full Review

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Review of

A Treasury of Songs by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

4star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

Some people have all the skills, not only is Julia Donaldson one of the most successful children's authors, but she can also carry a tune. For the past few years, she has adapted many of her most popular stories into songs and plays them during open readings, or releases them as part of a songbook. For the first time, A Treasury of Songs brings together several of her books in one omnibus and it also has a CD too of Donaldson singing the songs. Full Review

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Review of

Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories by Elli Woollard and Marta Altes

4.5star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

Now, whatever our age, there are probably a few books that we have all encountered at some point in our childhoods. They have stood the test of time to such an extent that they have become a piece of our culture common to so many of us, and are known throughout the world. One of them is by Rudyard Kipling, who brought a child's sense of wonder and his own Victorian absurdist set of explanations to play in a dozen examples of warm whimsy. In shrugging off evolution he got to convey how the rhino skin is so ill-fitting and rumpled, how the whale learnt he cannot eat humans, and how the elephant got such a thing as his trunk. In doing so he entertained his young daughter, not knowing she would die as a child long before he produced a book-length collection – and way before he saw something into print that has lasted ever since. Just in case these tales are not for your young audience yet (and it won't be long, trust me), you can start them in early with this lovely and bright adaptation. Full Review

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Review of

I'm Just No Good At Rhyming: And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups by Chris Harris and Lane Smith

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In the sniffy world of literary poetry, people seem to be able to knock together a dozen verses and get an audience of twenty people to buy a pamphlet, and they call themselves published authors. You get a similar thing at times with poetry for the young – most poetry books, after all, have a lot more blank space in them than routine volumes, and people compile their best arrays of very few words in between two covers and bingo, they have a book, and twenty minutes later bingo, you've read it. That's most certainly not the case here, for this is crammed with what has to be considered a major outpouring of wit and rhyme. And whatever age you are, and whatever experience with verse you may have, this will not seem to you like someone's first book of poetry. Full Review

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Review of

Doctor Who: Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse (Dr Who) by James Goss and Russell T Davies

4.5star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

Consider the Doctor. Just how many birthday and Christmas gifts must he have to hand out each year, were he to keep in touch with even half of his companions? He would certainly need a few novelty gifts for some of them, say, for example, whimsical books of verse that pithily encapsulate the life of a Time Lord and that of some of his friends and enemies. As luck would have it, he has space in his TARDIS to stock up in advance, so my advice to him – sorry, her – would be to pop along to his local Earth-based book emporium and get himself ready. And if you're working on a shorter timescale, with a shorter lifespan, and thinking perhaps just one gift season ahead, well my advice is pretty much the same. Full Review

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Review of

There's A Lion In My Bathroom by Giles Paley-Phillips

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This collection of nonsense poetry takes in all sorts of subjects, from wannabe magicians to armpits, and from failed cowboys to a girl with springs for feet. It's all very silly, all very nonsensical, and good fun. A proportion of profits are being donated to Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research. Full Review

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Review of

See You Later, Escalator by John Foster

4.5star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

Always a sucker for a good poetry anthology here at Bookbag, we've enjoyed two previous collections from John Foster. See You Later, Escalator continues in the same vein, with poems from the likes of Tony Mitton, Michael Rosen, Michelle Magorian and Brian Patten. Full Review

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Review of

There's An Alien In The Classroom by Gervase Phinn

3.5star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

There's An Alien In The Classroom is a collection of school-based poems and poems aimed at school-age children. Taking in all forms, from limericks and cautionary verse to acrostics and haiku, it offers a broad overview of poetry. With themes including school, families, seasons, Bonfire Night, Nativity plays and going to the dentist, there's something to appeal to every child. Full Review

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Review of

The Orchard Book Of Nursery Rhymes For Your Baby by Penny Dann

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All your favourite nursery rhymes are here, from Hickory Dickory Dock, through Little Bo Peep and Three Blind Mice, to Sing A Song Of Sixpence. With over sixty nursery rhymes to choose from, all the big names are presented in a beautiful compendium that you'll treasure for years. Full Review

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Review of

Michael Rosen's Big Book of Bad Things by Michael Rosen

4.5star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

When he was little, Michael Rosen's dad remembered all the bad things he'd done and reminded him of them when appropriate, so Michael imagined he'd written them all down in a Big Book of Bad Things. Here he presents the eponymous poem, as well as many many other tales of childhood, from the horrors of being a second late to school, to making a raft, to going to a café. Some bad, some sad, some quirky, some funny, some touching, some light-hearted, all wonderful. Full Review

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Review of

The World At Our Feet by Paul Cookson

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With the World Cup just around the corner, football is on everyone's lips. Paul Cookson, Poet in Residence at the National Football Museum, has compiled the best football poems for young children. Full Review

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Review of

Whizz Bang Orang-Utan by John Foster

3.5star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

Subtitled rhymes for the very young, you know what you're getting with Whizz Bang Orang-Utan. It's a poetry anthology, with sweet poems about kids, what they get up to, and of course whizzing and banging orang-utans. Full Review

0230745865.jpg

Review of

In My Sky at Twilight by Gaby Morgan (editor)

4star.jpg Children's Rhymes and Verse

Off the back of the success of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series there has been a boom in vampire novels aimed at teenagers. In My Sky at Twilight is perhaps one of the most unusual books to come out of this craze as it is a collection of love poetry aimed at teenage fans of the series. Full Review

Move on to Newest Confident Readers Reviews