It's Raining Pigs & Noodles
by Jack Prelutsky (Author), James Stevenson (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8

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Brace yourself for more pun-ishment from the playful Jack Prelutsky and illustrator James Stevenson, creators of The New Kid on the Block, Something Big Has Been Here, and A Pizza the Size of the Sun. More than 100 Prelutsky poems populate the pages--a mix of 8-year-old-boy humor, nonsense poetry in the tradition of Ogden Nash and Edward Lear, and clever, often unabashedly shameless, wordplay. While there are many, many doozies, our favorite is "Hiccup!," excerpted here:

Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein by Shel Silverstein
Reading level: Ages 9-12

Shel Silverstein shook the staid world of children's poetry in 1974 with the publication of this collection, and things haven't been the same since. More than four and a half million copies of Where the Sidewalk Ends have been sold, making it the bestselling children's poetry book ever.

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Falling Up by Shel Silverstein
Reading level: Ages 9-12

Millie McDeevit screamed a scream
So loud it made her eyebrows steam.
She screamed so loud
Her jawbone broke,
Her tongue caught fire,
Her nostrils smoked...

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A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Reading level: Ages 9-12

For over 20 years, kids and kids at heart have giggled at the jumbled, goofy nonsense poems of Shel Silverstein. And now, lucky readers can listen to his mad meanderings as well with this 20th anniversary edition of A Light in the Attic, which includes a CD read by the author himself. Eleven classics, including "Twistable, Turnable Man," "The Dragon of Grindly Grun," "Prehistoric," and "Backward Bill" are performed by the late virtuoso of verse, while the tremendously popular book contains every one of the original poems that made Silverstein's name a household word: "Poemsicle," "Hula Eel," "Standing Is Stupid," "Moon-Catchin' Net," "Meehoo with an Exactlywatt," and dozens upon dozens more. Silverstein's amusing, cartoonish line drawings are every bit as familiar and beloved to readers as his poems. Gone, but not forgotten, the creator of the irresistible poetry collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, left an indelible mark on children's poetry.

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The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders: Rhymes by Jack Prelutsky, Petra Mathers (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8

Playful poet Jack Prelutsky and the beloved Petra Mathers (Lottie's New Beach Towel) take youngsters from the heart of South Dakota to Monterey Bay in this extraordinary collection of poems and paintings that belongs on the shelf next to Ride a Purple Pelican and Beneath a Blue Umbrella.

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19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye
Reading level: Ages 9-12

As she grieved over the "huge shadow [that] had been cast across the lives of so many innocent people and an ancient culture's pride" after September 11, 2001, poet and author Naomi Shihab Nye's natural response was to write, to grasp "onto details to stay afloat." Accordingly, Nye has gathered over four dozen of her own poems about the Middle East and about being an Arab American living in the United States.

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Give Yourself to the Rain: Poems for the Very Young by Margaret Wise Brown, Teri L. Weidner (Illustrator), Leonard S. Marcus
Reading level: Ages 4-8

The author of Goodnight Moon wrote scores of poems for children in her short lifetime, many of which were left unpublished until now. In this collection of 24 poems, Margaret Wise Brown's virtuosity shines through with verses about simple childhood pleasures and sorrows.

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Summersaults: Poems & Paintings by Douglas Florian
Reading level: Baby-Preschool

It's summertime, and if you're a kid, the living can be very easy indeed. Douglas Florian's ode to the simmering, shimmering, sizzling, fizzling, flaming season of sun places every reader smack dab in the middle of a summer day (or night), with all its resident fireflies, cartwheels, green frogs, and sidewalk scooters.

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The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury by Jack Prelutsky (Editor), Meilo So (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 9-12

"I objurgate the centipede,/ A bug we do not really need," writes Ogden Nash. Carl Sandburg hums and strums, while pages later, William Jay Smith compares a toaster to a silver-scaled dragon. And of course A.A. Milne must add his two cents' worth, "tiddely pom, tiddely pom." What a labor of love! Children's poet and anthologist Jack Prelutsky has collected 211 of his favorite poems by 137 poets, representing the best of verse from each decade of the 20th century. "Until this century, most children's poetry was either syrupy sweet or overblown and didactic, and tended to talk down to its readers," Prelutsky writes in his introduction. "Contemporary children's poets have thrown all that condescension and moralizing out the window, and write with today's real child in mind."

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Corn-Fed: Poems by James Stevenson (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 9-12

A quirkily varied layout, scribbly-scrabbly illustrations, and unusual glimpses at everyday experiences mark the sixth entry in James Stevenson's splendid corn book collection (Popcorn, Candy Corn, Sweet Corn, etc.). Stevenson's free-form verses, as down-to-earth as the title implies, contemplate gritty roadside snowbanks, a not-so-scared opossum, a conversation between forks and spoons, and a bottle of ketchup on the dinner table. The pictures speak as loudly as the words in many cases.

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