Listen to Children: The Jack Prelutsky Antiquarian Children’s Poetry Collection at WWU

Abstract

In the preface to her book What the Dragon Fly Told the Children, Frances Bell Coursen speaks directly “To the Children’s Grown-Up Friends” stating that, “Nearly all children are poetic. They live near to the heart of things in the early spring-tide of life when ‘birds and buds and they are happy peers.’ They have also a natural rhyme and rhythm and the melody of verse.” The adult reader is gently reminded that listening to children allows us to embrace the endless possibilities of language and imagination.