Reading Journal March 28, 2011

Poetry by Heart: A Child’s Book of Poems to Remember
Compiled by Liz Attenborough
Foreward by Andrew Motion, poet laureate, UK
The Chicken House, Scholastic, Inc.
Copyright 2001
124 pages

Wide ranging in subject matter, depth, length, and age-level, this collection contains many poems by “anonymous” and poems by Shakespeare, Yeats, Langston Hughes, Edward Lear and many more. From Limericks such as THREE LITTLE OWLS WHO SANG HYMNS:

There were three little owls in a wood
Who sang hymns whenever they could;
What the words were about
One could never make out,
But one felt it was doing them good.
Anonymous

to the wordplay of A FLY AND A FLEA:

A fly and a flea in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, ‘let us flee!’
‘Let us fly!’ said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
Anonymous

to WALKING THE DOG SEEMS LIKE FUN TO ME:

I said, The dog wants a walk.

Mum said to Dad, It’s your turn.
Dad said, I always walk the dog.
Mom said, Well I walked her this morning.
Dad said, She’s your dog.
I didn’t want a dog in the first place.

Mum said, It’s your turn.

Dad stood up and threw the remote control
At the pot plant.
Dad said, I’m going down the pub.
Mum said, Take the dog.

Dad shouted, No way!
Mum shouted, You’re going nowhere!

I grabbed Judy’s lead
and we both bolted out the back door.

The stars were shining like diamonds.
Judy sniffed at a hedgehog, rolled up in a ball.
She ate a discarded kebab on the pavement.
She tried to chase a cat that ran up a tree.

Walking the dog
seems like fun to me.
Roger Stevens

this collection is full of poems I want to keep close by me.