Wednesday, May 28, 2008

More Kids' Stuff

A few more names of poets who've produced great work specifically for kids in the last forty years or so: Vernon Scannell, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Wes Magee, Ian McMillan, Gareth Owen, Benjamin Zephaniah, James Berry, Michael Rosen, Kit Wright, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein. Pretty obviously Spike Milligan and Roald Dahl, so famous it's easy to overlook them. And if we stretch it back far enough, James Reeves and Ogden Nash - I'm very hazy on dates here, but I suspect they don't quite make the forty year cut-off. But, blimey, it's quite a list to be going on with, eh? (The lack of women's names is a bit odd though. I've obviously got a major blind spot there.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

sylvia plath did write some books for kids (actually considered as a prospective EE topic last year!) but i don't think that falls into the forty year range either. then again, coming from someone who thought that hedda gabler was austrian...

goodnight moon by margaret wise brown is a bit old too, but my mum adored (and still adores) it.

Trebuchet said...

I'm not sure if you'd count Edward Lear and Hilaire Belloc. And of course, I suppose Rudyard Kipling for the marvellous verses in his Jungle Books, Just So Stories, and Rewards & Fairies and Puck of Pook's Hill?

Trebuchet said...

Wait a minute... 40-year cut-off hey? Oops.

Brian Connor said...

Yes, I sort of had Plath in mind when I was putting together my little list, but I don't know her stuff for kids that well. I seem to remember something about beds? The Hedda Gabler line made me laugh immoderately.

That 40 year cut-off was a bit arbitrary. The 20th century (and late 19th) was an extended Golden Age for this kind of verse so I'm more than happy to open the doors to Belloc, Lear and the mighty Kipling. And that means we'll need to get Walter de la Mare onboard.

Anonymous said...

You could throw caution to the wind and include T.S. Eliot for Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Brian Connor said...

Old Possum was on my mind just before my last reply but unaccountably slipped from it at the appropriate moment. A most welcome inclusion!