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Chapters (133)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. A Smile
  4. Yes
  5. The Laughter Forecast
  6. from Pippa Passes
  7. The Feeling of Having a Good Day
  8. To See a World
  9. Hope on a Rope
  10. The Teacher’s Gift
  11. High Achievers
  12. Picking Teams
  13. Best Friends
  14. Oath of Friendship
  15. May You Always
  16. Squeezes
  17. Don’t
  18. Mother to Son
  19. Two People
  20. You Have a Body
  21. Three Good Things
  22. The Cupboard
  23. BOY GIRL
  24. Isn’t My Name Magical?
  25. Keeping Wicket
  26. My Sister
  27. Middle Child
  28. Siblings
  29. A Blessing
  30. Paintings that Move
  31. Heroes
  32. Cats
  33. Cat
  34. Charlotte’s Dog
  35. Tell It to the Dog
  36. A Meerkat Lullaby
  37. Weird Wildlife
  38. Mad Gardener’s Song
  39. The Blind Men and the Elephant
  40. Mr McGuire
  41. Wonderful Worms
  42. Song of Mr Toad
  43. The Frog
  44. The Brushbaby
  45. The Porcupie
  46. Little Trotty Wagtail
  47. The Cuckoo
  48. The Eagle
  49. Be Like the Bird
  50. The Bird’s Nest
  51. The Hen
  52. Four Ducks on a Pond
  53. The Prayer of the Little Ducks
  54. I Saw a Ship a-Sailing
  55. Penelope’s Hats
  56. The Look
  57. Snakestanger
  58. The Bee’s Knees
  59. Bees
  60. Spelling Bees
  61. Poetry
  62. The Uncertainty of the Poet
  63. OIC
  64. The WOW!
  65. Travel
  66. From a Railway Carriage
  67. The Six Strings
  68. Tarantella
  69. This Poem . . .
  70. The Strawberry-Yogurt Smell of Words
  71. A Dictionary of Snow
  72. To Lalla, Reading my Verses Topsy-Turvy
  73. The Dictionary Bird
  74. Driven to Distraction
  75. Pencil World
  76. Bookish
  77. Just a Book?
  78. Today I Read a Bus Stop
  79. Wise One
  80. Apostrophe
  81. Comma
  82. Comparisons
  83. Back Room Boy
  84. A Song about Myself
  85. A Boy’s Song
  86. The Magic Pebble
  87. The Magic of the Brain
  88. I Saw a Peacock
  89. The Grammarian Saw a Peacock
  90. What is Pink?
  91. First Morning
  92. A Feather from an Angel
  93. The Treasures
  94. A Memory
  95. A Drop in the Ocean
  96. Voices of Water
  97. Roots
  98. Bulb
  99. from Home Thoughts from Abroad
  100. A Slash of Blue
  101. Loveliest of Trees
  102. The Sensation of Well-Being
  103. In the Tree’s Defence
  104. from Blueberries
  105. Beetroot
  106. Fish and Chips
  107. The Potatoes My Dad Cooks
  108. The Storm
  109. The Wind in a Frolic
  110. The Windmill
  111. Daybreak
  112. The Moon and a Cloud
  113. The Star
  114. Star
  115. Stars
  116. Comet
  117. Winter Morning
  118. February Twilight
  119. Night
  120. One Bright September Morning
  121. Pleasant Sounds
  122. Where Go the Boats?
  123. The Cataract of Lodore
  124. Empty Places
  125. Out in the Desert
  126. Contentment
  127. Sun is Laughing
  128. Changing Places
  129. Smile
  130. Acknowledgements
  131. About the Author
  132. Praise for Roger McGough
  133. Also available from Macmillan

Those little spikes will pierce your throat,

Those quills will make you ill,

And you will find no antidote,

No medicine or pill.

So let the little porcupie

Go quietly to its lair

And satisfy your appetite

With apple, plum or pear;

So porcupies may occupy

A world made safe for porcupies

Here and everywhere.

Vernon Scannell

Little Trotty Wagtail

Little Trotty Wagtail

Little trotty wagtail, he went in the rain,

And tittering, tottering sideways he near got straight again.

He stooped to get a worm, and look’d up to catch a fly,

And then he flew away, ere his feathers they were dry.

Little trotty wagtail, he waddled in the mud,

And left his little footmarks, trample where he would.

He waddled in the water-pudge, and waggle went his tail,

And he chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail.

Little trotty wagtail, you nimble all about,

And in the dimpling water-pudge you waddle in and out;

Your home is nigh at hand, and in the warm pigsty,

So, little Master Wagtail, I’ll bid you a goodbye.

John Clare

The Cuckoo

The Cuckoo

The cuckoo, O the cuckoo,

A pretty bird is she

Who singeth as she flies

From tree to tree to tree.

In her beak a wild mint leaf

To keep her sweet voice clear

And the more that she singeth

We know summer draweth near.

Anon.

The Eagle

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands:

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Be Like the Bird

Be Like the Bird

Be like the bird, who

Resting in his flight

On a twig too slight

Feels it bend beneath him,

Yet sings

Knowing he has wings.

Victor Hugo

The Bird’s Nest

The Bird’s Nest

I know a place, in the ivy on a tree,

Where a bird’s nest is, and the eggs are three,

And the bird is brown, and the eggs are blue,

And the twigs are old, but the moss is new,

And I go quite near, though I think I should have heard

The sound of me watching, if I had been a bird.

John Drinkwater

The Hen

The Hen

The hen it is a noble beast

But a cow is more forlorner

Standing lonely in a field

Wi’ one leg at each corner.

Anon.

Four Ducks on a Pond

Four Ducks on a Pond

Four ducks on a pond,

A grass-bank beyond,

A blue sky of spring,

White clouds on the wing;

What a little thing

To remember for years –

To remember with tears.

William Allingham

The Prayer of the Little Ducks

The Prayer of the Little Ducks

Dear God,

give us a flood of water.

Let it rain tomorrow and always.

Give us plenty of little slugs

and other luscious things to eat.