The Frog Inside My Hat: A First Book of Poems - Hardcover

* American Bookseller Pick of the Lists * Early Childhood News Directors' Choice Award

PreSchool-Grade 2-Thirty-seven poems by well-known poets are featured in this collection. The volume includes works by Aileen Fisher, Karla Kuskin, and Jack Prelutsky, as well as a few by poets best known for their adult poetry, e.g. Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Plath. Classic poems-Gelett Burgess's "The Purple Cow" and A.A. Milne's "The Furry Bear"-appear, along with more contemporary selections. The poems are loosely arranged by topic: animals, nonsense, food, weather and the seasons, and personal reflections. Moore's large, cheerful paintings feature brightly colored, personified animals and smiling children, and echo the lighthearted quality of the poems. X.J. and Dorothy Kennedy's Talking Like the Rain (Little, 1992) and Jack Prelutsky's Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Knopf, 1986) are more comprehensive anthologies for this age group and may prove to be more useful to librarians and teachers. The strength of this volume, however, is that, like Lee Bennett Hopkins's Surprises (1984) and Karla Kuskin's Soap Soup (1992, both HarperCollins), its length, large type, and accessible format invite young children to read the poems themselves.
Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.