101 Poems for Children: A Laureate's Choice

by Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, has chosen her favourite poems for children for this stunning collection of classic and modern verse, equisitely illustrated by multi-award-winning illustrator Emily Gravett.

Genres: Poetry, Childrens

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.

She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold this position.

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've come back to review because I keep rereading this. I don't think this is a poetry book for children, rather a book that should be given to a child to take into adulthood. I've been reading it to my son Arthur at bedtime for the past year, and these are poems you'll want to read time and time again. Their meanings are elusive or deceptively simplistic, and you can read something new in them each time. They also all sound brilliant and this is important for a book of poetry for children, hell, for anyone. These are poems that tackle big themes - themes you may feel uncomfortable talking about with your children. Poems like these can break 'scary' ideas down, give you a means in which to introduce nuance to your kids (and reintroduce it to yourself): poems you'll want to go back to, to feel the words and the sounds on your lips.

My son is three and he asks for the John Hegley and the Edward Lears. I keep on going back to Yeats and Kavanagh. The Song of Wandering Aengus and The Long Garden back-to-back destroys me every time. These are poems about childhood and about childhood haunting adulthood (for me anyway). They send Arthur to sleep, but that is meant as a compliment! My voice is usually cracking by the time the sun is setting on the play.

There are poems of wonder as well, poems that spark the imagination with a simple image. I go back to Galway Kinnell's Blackberry Eating, Imtiaz Dharker's How to Cut a Pomegranate, Gillian Clarke's The Fox and the Girl, Ian McMillan's Adult Fiction again and again. These are all new poems for me.

I've discovered so many great poets in this book, some of whom I had never heard of: I love the contributions from Libby Houston, George Mackay Brown and Norman MacCaig too. I have a literature Masters, but I've always had a love it or hate it relationship with poetry. This book has changed that. It demands that you slow down, read aloud and repeat.

[Mr Bramley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generally nice book of poetry, but nothing special.
I enjoyed seeing a decent handful of representation from Welsh and Scottish poets, however I would say that, as I'm finding repeated in many children's poetry books, a large number from this collection are more classic older poems that I'm not convinced hold much place in a classroom anymore. And again, I don't mean at all that children shouldn't study old, classic, or difficult poems, but rather that a lot of what seem to be famous poems, or simple well known nursery rhymes, are outdated in their language or suggestions.

As I read through, since this was a library book, I made a list of the poems featured that I particularly enjoyed in case I want to use them or this book again in future:

How to cut a pomegranate- Imtiaz Dharker
Dragonfly - Libby Houston
The Dream of the Cabbage Caterpillars -Libby Houston
F for Fox - Carol Ann Duffy
A Crow and a Scarecrow- Carol Ann Duffy
The Owl and the Pussycat - Edward Lear
To a Mouse - Robert Burns
The Loch Ness Monster Song - Edwin Morgan
In the Bee-Factory - Libby Houston
The Sounds of Earth - Julie O'Callaghan
Thunder - Elizabeth Bishop
Snow and Snow - Ted Hughes
January Cold Desolate - Christina Rossetti
At Nine of the Night I Opened My Door - Charles Causley
The Song of Wandering Aengus - W. B. Yeats
Night Mail - W. H. Auden
Great-Grandmother's Lament - Jackie Kay
What are Heavy? - Christina Rossetti
Out in the Desert - Charles Causley
What is Pink? - Christina Rossetti
Bed in Summer - Robert Louis Stevenson

(As a personal side note... I hadn't realised I was /quite/ so picky as to only really enjoy 21 poems out of this book of 101...)

[Laura Lee Denby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad to have purchased this book. Carol Ann Duffy has compiled a beautiful selection of poetry. There are works by so many wonderful poets including Syvia Plath, Lewis Carroll, Ted Hughes and Duffy herself, amongst many more. It really is a joy to read and honestly made me want to write. I think it could also inspire that wish to create such pieces, in children listening to or reading this book.
It is a challenging book and would be an excellent leisure time book for promoting enjoyment and wider reading in more able pupils. It is more appropriate generally to older primary school children.
I also think it would be useful to have as a resource for exploration of a single poem, perhaps encouraging the class to create their own using one as inspiration.
This collection makes the works of classic poets very accessible for children and that is a very positive thing indeed. I envision this book being a useful resource to me in the classroom for years-and one which I will enjoy reading every time.

[Sue Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic collection of poems chosen for children by Carol Ann Duffy. As you would expect from a Laureate, the selection comes from a depth of knowledge and experience of words and poems. Included are poets such as Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Edward Lear, John Hegley, Adrian Mitchell and John Agard.

I note from Carol Ann Duffy's introduction that she recalls having 'marvellous teachers who used a lot of poetry in the classroom'. She also remembers learning poems off by heart. Look what can happen to children if we read and learn poetry in our classes. Duffy explains that the collection is chosen to grow with children, to live with them for a long time because sometimes poems need time and experiences to fully work their magic. It is interesting to return to familiar poems, often comforting. Duffy explains poetry is 'generous... constantly offering us its music and imagery, expanding, if we will let it, into our hearts and minds...'

[Aven Wildsmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really wonderful selection of poems for kids aged about 7-11. Carol Ann Duffy has a brilliant taste in poetry and the wide knowledge to draw out a lot of poems that are not usually found in anthologies for children. There's a great mixture of ideas and styles -- thoughtful poems, comic poems, nonsense poems, and many poems to challenge kids and get them thinking and imagining. Every poem, even the shorter or seemingly simpler ones, has that spark that keeps a poem with you. Altogether, this is one of the best anthologies for children I've read, and would definitely recommend it.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just for children. From "Adult Fiction":

I used to go down to our little library on a Friday night
In late summer, just as autumn was thinking about
Turning up, and the light outside would be the colour
Of an Everyman cover and the lights in the library
Would be soft as anything, and I'd sit at a table
And flick through a book and fall in love
With the turning of the leaves, the turning of the leaves.

Ian McMillan

[Thomas Cathcart · Rating 4 out of 5]

101 poems for children was a fantastic way to integrate poetry into children's English curriculum. Having read this book in primary school, I did not have any exposure to poetry really and it was an entrance into poetry that is fun, engaging and allows children to gain access to poetry that is inspiring.

[Chloe Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of poems were about animals and plants which links to science. There was a Poem for everybody in the collection. There is lots of different examples to use. Lots of the poets included were male so I would make sure I used a diverse range of poets when teaching.

[Susan Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of these poems would be hard for kids these days to understand. I enjoyed about a quarter of the poems in this diverse collection.

[Sophie Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very comprehensive collection of poetry chosen by Carol Ann Duffy. Highly recommended.

[Adriana]

Several gems. A few I’d have left out.

[Suphia Ansari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful introduction to a wide range of poetry both new and familiar. It is jam packed with poems you would want to read again and again. This collection is a mix of classic and modern verse. These poems are a fantastic resource for kS2 children either to recite, read together and as an introduction to the different types of poems.

One of my personal favourites is 'Good Morning, Mr Croco-Doco-Dile by Charles Causley'. This kept my year three children listening attentively, awaiting to see what would happen to me? They role played the poem in groups and many were able to recite the poem while they presented their role-play.

[Sinead · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think it was possible but this book has introduced me to alternative poets that are not normally included in anthologies - Charles Causley & Libby Houston being just 2 - and Im really pleased that it has. They bring something new and refreshing to childrens poetry. Carol Ann Duffy has done a great job at balancing out the poems in this book so it doesn't drag - it should appeal to most children and include some great poems that parents can read aloud to children - I dare you to try reading aloud 'The Loch Ness Monster's Song' by Edwin Morgan - it was a great laugh even attempting it!