Miracles: Poems by Children of the English-speaking World

by Richard Lewis

A collection of poems written by children in eighteen countries where English is the native tongue or an important second language.

Genres: Poetry, Childrens

214 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1966

Reviews

[Mike]

Collected poems by children. For example:
The Visit (written by Eve Recht of Australia when she was 11.)
I saw it come across our lawn.
It had silently,
stealthily,
climbed our wall
and now stood
like a statue of stone
dressed in dark and mystery.
The air was old.

[David Alonzo]

I first encountered this book during a music composition class in 1975. The teacher chose several poems from the book and the assignment was to write a song using the words of one of the poems as the text for the song. At the time I only read the poems assigned, but recently decided it was time to read them all.

This is an interesting anthology of the thoughts of children from all parts of the world where English is spoken - in poetic form. Charming thoughts. Scary thoughts. They run the gamut.

One poem by Peter Kelso, an 11-year-old Australian sums it up:

POEMS

In poems, our earth’s wonder
Are windowed through
Words

A good poem must haunt the heart
And be heeded by the head of the
Hearer

With a wave of words, a poet can
Change his feelings into cool, magical, mysterious
Mirages

Without poetry our world would be
Locked within itself—no longer enchanted by the poet’s
Spell.

By the way, this is NOT the poem I set to music.

[Lisa Vegan]

I’m sure I liked this book partly because I read it when I was 12 or 13 and I compared it to the poetry my classmates and I wrote when I was 10 and my fifth grade class wrote poems and made a book out of it; I think some of my classmates poems are better written and more heartfelt/deep than the ones in this book. But this book is suitable for young kids as it’s fun for kids to read work written by other kids. These poems are written by children ages 5-13 from many (English speaking) countries, and are divided into sections: Poetry (poems about poetry), Morning, Spring, The Wind and the Rain, Playing, Summer, Creatures, The Sea, Autumn, People, Feelings, Winter, Night. Each poet’s name, age, and country are listed on the page.

[Lilyan]

The book is a collection of poems written from kids as young as 4 to as old as 17 in countries around the world. It starts with the youngest kids and gradually moves to the teenagers. It felt like it was purposefully arranged that way so you could see how people grow up. How things we notice, what is important, and our outlook on life slowly changes. It felt like I was reading a person growing out of their childhood innocence. You can also see the cultural and environmental differences between each one. Like the ones from Australia versus Mexico verses the Philippines, ect. The poems did not really use powerful language like Poe and Dickinson, but that showed the difference between adulthood/teenagehood. I thought it was really cute and relatable. I give it 5 stars.

[Lisa Hathaway]

Full of magic and wonder. Lost my vopy but had flagged many of the poems as amazing and wonderful