A Striking Contrast:Recent British and American Poetry for Children Agnes Perkins (bio) Blackburn, Thomas . The Devil's Kitchen. London: Chatto & Windus, 1975. Cole, William , ed. Poetry of Horses. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1979. Fisher, Aileen . Out in the Dark and Daylight. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. Foster, John , ed. A First Poetry Book. London: Oxford University Press, 1979. Fuller, John . Squeaking Crust. London: Chatto & Windus, 1974. Hesketh, Phoebe . A Song of Sunlight. London: Chatto & Windus, 1974. Hughes, Ted . Moon-Bells. London: Chatto & Windus, 1978. Janeczko, Paul B. , ed. Postcard Poems: A Collection of Poetry for Sharing. Scarsdale, N.Y.: Bradbury, 1979. Jones, Brian . The Spitfire on the Northern Line. London: Chatto & Windus, 1975. Kuskin, Karla . Dogs & Dragons Trees & Dreams. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. Larrick, Nancy , ed. Bring Me All of Your Dreams. New York: Evans, 1980. Livingston, Myra Cohn , ed. Poems of Christmas. New York: Atheneum, 1980. Mayer, Gerda . The Knockabout Show. London: Chatto & Windus, 1978. Moore, Lillian , ed. Go With the Poem. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979. Sansom, Clive . An English Year. London: Chatto &: Windus, 1975. Few poets seem able to refrain from writing about cats. Cat poems, good and bad, abound, and while it may be unfair to pick parts of individual poems as typical of recent poetry for children, a [End Page 186] sample from three poems about cats by writers honored with major awards for poetry for children in the United States and England illustrates different attitudes observable from the two sides of the Atlantic. It's a far cry from the descriptions of returning pets by Aileen Fisher and Karla Kuskin to that of Ted Hughes. Take, for example, Fisher's coy verses: At break of dayhe's back to staycontented with our sunny dwelling. But nobody knowswhere Tim-cat goesat night . . . and Tim-cat isn't telling. Or take Karla Kuskin's "cutesy" ending to a longer poem: I'm sitting on the chairAnd I don't see where he is.I don't see one hair of his.I just hear the floorboards scarcely squeek.This cat comes and goesOn invisible toes.The sneak. Compare these with Hughes's picture of the "battered master of the house" who comes through the doorway: Recovered from his nearly fatal mauling,Two probably three pounds heavierSince the last time he dragged in for help.He deigns to recognize meWith his criminal eye, his deformed voice,Then poises, head lowered, muscle-bound,Like a bull for the judges,A thick Devon bull,Sniffing the celebration of sardines. Fisher and Kuskin are winners for 1978 and 1979, respectively, of the American National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) [End Page 187] Poetry Award. Ted Hughes won the British Signal Award for Poetry in 1979 for Moon-Bells, published the preceding year. Not only are the poems in Moon-Bells aimed at a more mature audience than are the 1980 collections of verse by Fisher and Kuskin, but they also represent a different attitude toward children and their understandings, an attitude apparent in a good many of the books of poems from England in recent years. Not all of the British collections, it must be admitted, are as good as Moon-Bells. John Foster's A First Poetry Book is only a garishly illustrated anthology of easy and mostly trivial verse. But at its best, British poetry for children is not condescending. It reflects an attitude that takes both children's abilities and children's literature seriously, as much poetry that is commended in this country does not. The poetry awards themselves, of course, are not directly comparable. NCTE has been recently honoring writers who have produced a substantial amount of verse for fairly young children, such as David McCord and Myra Cohn Livingston, both better technicians than Fisher and Kuskin. Signal, on the other hand, looks for a high-quality book of poems published during a specific year and judges by adult standards, although considering only books for children. If a comparable award were set up in this country, or if the NCTE emphasis were shifted, one wonders if a suitable recipient could have been found...