Zooming the Zoo
John Dougherty, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones
Otter-Barry Books

There are over sixty poems in this splendid collection. Most are light-hearted in tone but nonetheless the author often uses humour to put across serious ideas, my most favourite being Just Let Me Read, which wearing my teacher’s hat, is spot on and absolutely in the spirit of a recent Guardian report about the joy having been sucked from the education system by the present government. The poem begins thus: ‘Just let me read / Without counting commas / Identifying idioms / Noticing nouns / Analysing analogies // Just let me feel a sense of wonder / / Without asking me to wonder / How it was achieved.’ Himself an ex-teacher, Dougherty doesn’t say that this should never be done, rather that it should not be the raison d’etre for asking children to read something.

I’m sure children will be amused by When You’re a Kid about them being able to sit on a loo seat the wrong way round and pretending to be riding a motorbike, whereas teachers cannot do this. I guess it rather depends where the loo happens to be: this teacher is able to do so in the privacy of her own bathroom.

Another poem I particularly like is the three-liner In the Library, which says so much in so few words. Another is Learning to Walk about the importance of risk-taking in learning.

The author’s early life in Ireland is the subject of both Taking My Children to Larne in which he recalls a time during The Troubles when bombings were as he says ‘normal’. It’s also mentioned in The First Time I Went to Scotland wherein he remembers being searched before entering shops in Northern Ireland.

Finally, I suspect everyone will be amused at the titular poem about a Zoom meeting that doesn’t quite go to plan on account of animal mishaps.

Whatever your children’s feelings about poetry, it’s definitely worth sharing some of John’s work with them; I’m sure you’ll find poems to please everybody. Individual readers will enjoy Tom Morgan-Jones’ black and white illustrations.