phaedosia's bookmark (from the bookmark exchange) reminded me of a childhood favorite that my mother read to me so often she had the poems memorized -- A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. You may be looking for poetry for older children but, if not, this is one worth considering.

There is an edition of A Child's Garden of Verses that is illustrated by Tasha Tudor and is available on Amazon. I must order it.

Is nonsense poetry OK? If so, try Jack Prelutsky. My sister (an elementary school librarian) gave me one of his books when I lamented the loss of my absolute favorite book of children's poetry, the Arrow Book of Funny Poems. :) It contained such classics as Eletelephony ("Once there was an elephant/Who tried to use the telephant/No No! I mean...), Grandpa Dropped His Glasses ("in a pot of dye/and when he put them on again, he saw a purple sky"), When Daddy Fell into the Pond, and so on. Prelutsky's work is similar to these great nonsensical rhymes.

Of course, there's TS Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, as well as AA Milne's Pooh poems, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Longfellow. There are several picture books which illustrate single poems as well: for example, Alffred Noyes' The Highwayman illustrated by Charles Mikolaycak, Robert Frost's Birches illustrated by Ed Young...

Also, check Inside Out & Back Again, by Thannha Lai. A memoir in verse of a Vietnamese girl whose family fled Saigon in 1975 and ended up in the southern US. It covers her last year in Vietnam, as one of the Boat People, and her first year in the US; she was 10 or so at the beginning of the book. Although it describes her personal experience of the culture shock from Vietnam to the US, it has universal appeal - when I put the book down, I was vividly remembering my own experience starting a new school in a new town when I was 12!

As soon as we could talk, my mother had us memorizing and reciting poetry. She used Silver Pennies by Blanche Jennings Thompson. Each poem has a short introductory paragraph and there are many charming old-school black and white drawings. This volume is so dated that it is charming. One thing I appreciate as an adult is that Thompson includes poems that are not strictly children's poems; Sara Teasdale, Yeats, Millay, Sandburg and many others. I believe it was first published in 1926 and has been around ever since. All my grown siblings have a copy, but my oldest sister has the treasured and battered original with a green embossed cover of a young child watching pennies fall from the heavens. You may be looking for something more modern, but I'm recommending this anyway.

I lifted this from a very enthusiastic review of a poetry book that is no longer in print, but the reviewer mentioned the following poets as writing humorous contemporary poetry for children. Only Prelutsky and Silverstein are familiar to me. My children had Silverstein's poetry books. I liked them almost as much as I loathed The Giving Tree.

Jeff Moss
Bruce Lansky
Jack Prelutsky
Douglas Florian
Shel Silverstein

Rosefolly

Great. Thanks for your help.

Just wondering whether anyone knows any children's poets who are Af-Am or Hispanic...?

Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou are African-American and both have written poetry for children.

Marilyn Nelson is another African American poet - she is the author of the Newbery honor book Carver: a life in poems and A Wreath for Emmett Till, a cycle of 15 sonnets.

Here is a link that might be useful: Marilyn Nelson

Great. Thank you. I googled those poets and then got further recs from there. Many thanks!

I did find a useful link for Hispanic Lit for kids which will be useful... (See attached. FYI.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Hispanic Lit list for kids