This collection of over 250 poems provides a one-volume source of former poet laureate of Great Britain Ted Hughes’s contribution to children’s po etry. The full range of Hughes’s creative genius is exemplified in poems that are playful, joyful, imaginative, and thoughtful. Poems for younger children from books such as The Mermaid’s Purse (1991) and The Cat and the Cuckoo (1987) come first, followed by more complex poems from What Is the Truth? (1984) and Season Songs (1975) for older readers. Raymond Briggs has cre ated many small, soft-pencil drawings to complement the subjects and moods of the poems. The volume is indexed by titles and by first lines . ca

Originally published by Faber and Faber Great Britain, in 2005.

This collection brings together the more than 250 children’s poems Ted Hughes wrote throughout his career. They are arranged by volume, beginning with those published for younger readers and progressing to more complex and sophisticated poems that he felt were written “within hearing” of children. Throughout, Hughes reveals his instinctive grasp of a child’s insatiable wonderment and sense of humor as well as his own instinctive and illuminating perspective on people and other creatures of the natural world.
 
With drawings that capture the wit, range, and richness of these poems, acclaimed illustrator Raymond Briggs helps make this a book any reader can return to again and again for amusement, inspiration, and reassurance.  Collected Poems for Children is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.