Here's a Little Poem by Jane Yolen

Yolen, Jane, and Andrew Fusek Peters, comp. 2007. Here's a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry. Cambridge: Candlewick.

Divided into four parts; Me, Myself, and I, Who Lives in My House?, I Go Outside, and Time for Bed, this big, bright, cheery collection of poems follows the morning to night activities of a group of rosy-cheeked babies and toddlers. They bang pots, eat yucky stuff, make mud pies, throw temper tantrums, and gaze with sweetness and wonder at the world around them. In Hamsters by Marci Ridlon a small, bespeckled boy gently strokes a tiny, beige hamster sitting in the front pocket of his overalls: Hamsters are the nicest things/That anyone could own./I like them even better than/Some dogs that I have known. Jane Yolen's compilation includes some of today's best known children's poets; Eve Merriam, Leslea Newman, and Mary Anne Hoberman; and some you might not expect such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Gertrude Stein. The mixed media illustrations by Polly Dunbar are done in nursery room colors both bright and pastel. Mud-brown footprints, smiling yellow suns, soft pink hearts, velvety-red flower petals, splatters of gooey-thick strawberry jam, and splotches of icky, soggy greens trail the children from one huge, full-page illustration to the next; until the very last buttery-yellow page where, with one last kiss, a mother tucks up a gently sleeping, pink-cheeked child. This is truly a book parents will want to read again and again to their preschoolers.