Written by Ted Hughes and illustrated by Raymond Briggs (The Snowman) this beautiful collection has been specially arranged to start with poems for younger readers and progress to the more complex and sophisticated for older children.
Ted Hughes, a former Poet Laureate has an instinctive grasp of how children think and his poems will engage and stretch their imagination. Perfect for a gift and equally perfect on your own shelf so you can dip in whenever you like.
This collection brings together the poems Ted Hughes wrote throughout his life for children. They are arranged by volume, beginning with those younger readers and progressing to the more complex and sophisticated poems of Under the North Star and What is the Truth?, and Season Songs, which he remarked were written 'within hearing' of children.
Hughes reveals his instinctive grasp of a child's insatiable curiosity, humour and invention, and his own incomparable understanding of the natural world, in poems that engage and stretch the imagination in a way no other poet has done before or since.
Raymond Briggs brings to the collection drawings that capture the wit, gentleness and humanity of these poems and make this a book any reader will return to again and again for inspiration and reassurance.
Ted Hughes is widely considered one of the greatest poets of his generation and indeed one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was born in Yorkshire in 1930, and was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. In 1974 Hughes was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In 1977 he was awarded an OBE for services to Literature, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1998. His most widely read classic children’s story The Iron Man, has been adapted for both stage and screen, and is regarded as one of the greatest children’s books of all time.
