Monster Poems

by John Foster (Editor)

This is a collection of poems about one of children's favourite subjects - monsters. Korky Paul's lively illustrations to life this popular poetry book. John Foster and Korky Paul's poetry partnership began over 10 years ago, with the publication of "Dragon Poems". The combination of John's inspired and witty selection of poems, with Korky's crazily imaginative and anarchic illustrations, has proved exceptionally popular. "If this combination of verse and illustration doesn't make you laugh out loud, then you must have missed out on the sense of humour gene" - "The Guardian". "Delightfully scary...wickedly funny" - "The Herald".

Genres: Poetry, Childrens

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

John Foster taught English for twenty years before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of over 100 books for classroom use including the best-selling PSHE and Citizenship course Your Life. He is also a highly regarded children's poet, anthologist and poetry performer.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jake Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author John Foster and illustrator Korky Paul are a fantastic pair in children’s writing. A mixture of funny, wacky, silly and sometimes sombre poems all about monsters of various origin, size and shape, Foster structures a collage of generally snappy and memorable monster-themed poems alongside Paul’s magical illustrations, the two working together to make every page frantic and whimsical. This book is simply fun; the illustrations are vibrant and detailed. They are delightful to look at and help guide a potentially younger reader to the intentions of the poems. The writing mirrors this; A more spooky poem is generally longer and builds a sense of dread as you read on. The funnier poems are short and snappy, some as small as a sentence or two. The book does not take very long to read through but it is very re-visitable and something I think would be engaging to people of all ages due to it being structured well and it being appealing visually.

My favourite poem is funnily enough the final one of the book, entitled ‘The Last Monster’ by Richard Edwards. It is from the human’s perspective first, detailing their triumphant march to kill the final monster, whilst the second half is from the monster’s perspective as he talks about what it is like to be weary and old, on his own and awaiting his own death. This poem had much more emotional potency than I would have expected from this book, which I think is really fantastic. Finishing on somber note is a good description of how it felt to finish this extremely vibrant and wacky book.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

April is National Poetry Month!

CC Standards for poetry can be easy to work into the 7th/8th grade English Language Arts curriculum.

It's useful to have daily, weekly or bi-weekly poetry reading and analysis with high-interest -- versus literary -- poems. For this, I found the poems collected in the various books edited by John Foster and Korky Paul generated substantial student enthusiasm.

Foster and Paul have collected poems your students will want to read. The artwork is divine, and the poems lend themselves to daily reading and basic poetry analysis. You'll find the likes of Shakespeare (Macbeth's Witches' Chant) and other classics sprinkled in these volumes, as well.

I bought several copies of each collection, and made them available to table groups. Students worked in groups or pairs to choose and analyze a poem a day using the Poetry Analysis Bellwork Slips.

Or, conversely, you can assign specific poems to analyze. Students used the Trifold Poetry Pamphlets to help identify figurative language devices, types of poety and rhyme schemes.

The sheer number of books in this poetry collection also meant I could use a different book with each table group, ensuring students collaborated with their table peers.

Visit my blog for the free teaching resources / handouts mentioned in this review: http://amb.strikingly.com/blog/teachi...

[Ashton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Monster were scary because they wanted to eat people. THe poems are easy to read and understand.