POEMS for CHILDREN by JEAN KENWARD

GRANDMOTHER'S SONGS

Poems for children by Jean Kenward

H A R E L U C Y

Down in the orchard
lives old Hare Lucy.
She likes to eat apples
sweet and juicy.
She likes to eat apples,
she likes to eat plums:
‘They taste much nicer
when nobody comes,’
says old Hare Lucy.
‘I sometimes dances
alone in the grasses.
I sometimes prances.
I feels the wind
in me two tall ears –
and so I appears
and disappears
deep in the grasses.
Nobody comes
to watch me munching
apples and plums.
Apples and plums
are sweet and juicy.
Sweet is the grass!’
says old Hare Lucy.

JEAN KENWARD (b. 1920)

Grandmother’s Songs an ideal selection to read aloud to young children. It is available either with a plain cover or with an original ink drawing on the front cover (usually of Hare Lucy) by Barbara Sedassy. There is often a small starlit window on the back cover but they all vary. (Sometimes it’s the other way round with the hare on the back. And the hare is getting wackier by the minute).

It is a selection from the many poems for children written by Jean Kenward in the last thirty-five years, from about the time she first became a grandmother herself.

“All these songs preserve the freshness and immediacy of childhood. They contain a sense of marvel at the natural world. They appeal to children’s love of rhythm and rhyme, whether sense or nonsense. These qualities are what have made her songs and nursery rhymes for younger children so popular in anthologies worldwide.” (excerpt from introduction to Grandmother’s Songs).