The Oxford Book of Children's Verse in America

By Donald Hall

Book Overview

In the tradition of Iona and Peter Opie's Oxford Book of Children's Verse comes this anthology by the award-winning poet and children's book author Donald Hall. Bringing together poems written for children and also poems written for anybody which children have enjoyed, the book includes
anonymous works, ballads, and recitation pieces, beginning with the Calvinist verses of the seventeenth century.
Hall has collected poems from Sunday School magazines, Christmas annuals for children, and children's periodicals such as St. Nicholas and Youth's Companion. Many marvelous writers, some no longer remembered, wrote almost every month for these nineteenth and twentieth century publications. In
addition to the expected names of Longfellow and Whittier, we find Sarah Josepha Hale (Mary Had a Little Lamb), Mary Mapes Dodge (creator of Hans Brinker), and Palmer Cox (with his marvelous Brownies). Twentieth century authors abound: Ogden Nash, T.S. Eliot, John Updike, Theodore Roethke, to
name just a few. The book concludes with the fabulous nonsense of present-day writers like Shel Silverstein and Nancy Willard.

About the Editor:

Donald Hall's many books include The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes, Kicking the Leaves, and Ox-Cart Man, which won the Caldecott Medal for children's literature.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195035399
• ISBN13: 9780195035391
• Release Date: April 1985
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.8" x 8.7"
• Age Range: 10 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 8

Customer Reviews

A Classic

I remember this book from when I was young. Now I share it with my children, and always buy it for baby gifts. A must to any childs library.

A wonderful book

As parents of a three-year-old, some of our happiest recent moments have been reading to him from this wonderful collection of poems, which range from Colonial works to Emily Dickenson to Richard Wilbur. Sure, much of it is beyond him now, but he likes the rhythm and rhymes he hears--and he even knows to request "Casey at the Bat." We're pretty sure we're going to get a lot of enjoyable use out of this book in years to come.

Excellent book of quality poems for schoolage children

This book is for anyone -- parents, educators, or students -- looking for an excellent anthology of high quality poetry for older schoolage children. Several steps beyond the nursery rhyme, it contains many works by famous poets which are readily accessible to chldren in elementary and middle school. This is one you will keep coming back to again and again!! (As a teacher, I find in preferrable to most of the textbook anthologies available in classrooms.)