Chicken in the Kitchen
Neal Zetter
Troika Books

Subtitled Neal Zetter’s Greatest Hits, this lively book contains the forty two most frequently requested poems by children during two decades of school visits, plus two bonus ones, and covers choices from the performance poet’s eight previously published books:

From his first, Bees in My Bananas, comes one of my favourites – Cool Addiction, the first verse of which goes thus: ‘My head is stuck inside this book / I only meant to take a look / Till I saw what was written / Instantly my mind was smitten / In a land of fascination / Sparking my imagination / Passions burning like a flame / Pictures dancing in my brain’. What more could a writer ask of their book?

I’d not come across Terrific Tot (from Here Come the Superheroes) before but it’s a fun example of Neal’s rapping style: here’s the opening verse: ‘he’s a hero in a nappy / But don’t let that put you off / He can tackle twenty rhinos / He can handle rough and tough / Though he nearly is a newborn / And still peeing in a pot / He’s a baby trained to save me / Shout his name / Terrific Tot!

I think though, that my favourite of all is the new offering, Just Be You. Here’s the 4th and final verse:
‘It’s the words that you speak / It’s the things that you do / So why be someone else / Just be you.’ This is a poem that every child needs to hear over and over and …

With occasional black and white illustrations by Emily Ford, this is a book for primary age children be they at home, or at school. Ideally wherever they read these poems, it should be aloud to get the best from the beat and liveliness, wordplay and rhyme.