Gabriel Fitzmaurice’s Best-Loved Poems for Children is the first collected edition of the Kerry poet’s work for young readers, four decades of poems from a man who spent more than thirty years teaching in the village school in Moyvane, with a new introduction by poet Enda Wyley and wonderfully wicked illustrations by Bob Ó Cathail.
Meet a boy who can talk horse (and cow, and dog, and fur). A girl who’s proud to be exactly who she is. A puppy nobody wanted, until Christmas Eve. And a grandad who is, quite simply, the best friend in the world.
From the glorious mess of school tours and bathtime to the hush of a bedtime prayer, Fitzmaurice writes exactly the way children think: funny, honest, a little bit rude and unapologetically true. These are poems by a teacher who listened to children for a living, poems that know what it’s like to be small in a very big world.
This is Irish children’s poetry at its warmest and most mischievous – made for reading aloud at bedtime, sharing in the classroom and giving as a gift, for readers aged 4+ and the parents, grandparents and teachers who read to them.
Read them aloud. Laugh out loud. And don’t be surprised if you find yourself hugging someone a little tighter afterwards. Because, as the poet himself says, if you can’t laugh or cry at these poems, you’re OLD.
https://www.mercierpress.ie/books/gabriel-fitzmaurices-best-loved-poems-for-children/
Gabriel Fitzmaurice was born in 1952 in the village of Moyvane, County Kerry, where he still lives. The previous principal of the village primary school, he has written more than thirty books.
