If your kids love Mary and her little lamb, they’ll go wild for Mary’s canary—the two make a great pair of animal poems for kids. For more fun with your young ones, break out these silly ...

Poetry can be fun. "When you write poems with kids, you see how immediately they get this," Matthew Burgess says. "If you read a poem aloud to kids, they start to dance in their seats." ...

Harrison, who has written dozens of books, contributed one poem and reached out to other poets to select or write one for children. "I started contacting poets. It didn't take long," Harrison said.

Allusion is, unlike intertextuality, deliberate, and, unlike plagiarism, meant to be recognized. It presumes “a community of knowledge,” a phrase I like for its fellow feeling.

As he writes on his website: "He really, really, really wants to write children's books." For more about Bliss and to hear two of his poems, watch my video interview with him.

Susan Cooper's poem "The Shortest Day," celebrating the winter solstice, is also a children's book illustrated by Carson Ellis. They collaborated by mail.