From the back cover: "I feel always trembling on the brink of poetry..." wrote Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand's greatest writer. Her poems and tales for children have a simple and mysterious beauty."
This large (A4) hardcover book contains 36 pages of poems written by Katherine Mansfield when she was young, some when she was just at school. They are a tribute to her childhood in Wellington.
The pages are black and white and fully illustrated. Here are some examples.
She calls her younger brother Half-past-six because that is the time he has to go to bed. They were very close and it devastated her when he was killed during training at the beginning of the Great War. She dedicates the poems to him and they are about their childhood days, life in the nursery, fears, food, tantrums, parents, fantasies, etc.
Parents will need to be aware that these poems were written over 100 years ago and reflect the attitudes of the time. Words such as "blackie" and "nigger" are used. There is also a reference to smacking.
No living homeschool education is complete without poetry and I recommend adding a collection of Mansfield's early poems.
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