DAVID, BRIAN, PETER
AND JOHN
CONTENTS
[Preface]
[Rosamunda]
[Disappointment]
[On Strike]
[Fairy Sight]
[A Fairy Necklace]
[Paying a Call]
[Before Breakfast]
[Goblins]
[The Fairy’s Bedtime]
[Poppies]
[A Queer Butterfly]
[Lovely Frocks]
[The Jolly Wind]
[The Witch’s Balloons]
[Fairy Music]
[The Little Folk on the Hill]
[The Moon at Tea-Time]
[April]
[The Silent Pool]
[This Afternoon]
[The “Feeling”]
[The Naughty Gnome]
[Six o’clock]
[The Imp’s Mistake]
[Put to Bed]
[The Merry Breeze]
[An Accident]
[A Happy Ending]
[PREFACE]
The children of nowadays are different in many of their likes and dislikes, from the children of ten years ago. This change of attitude is noticeable as much in the world of children’s poetry as it is in other things.
In my experience of teaching I have found the children delight in two distinct types of verses. These are the humorous type and the imaginative poetical type—but the humour must be from the child’s point of view and not from the “grown-up’s”—a very different thing. And the imagination in the second type of poem must be clear and whimsical, otherwise the appeal fails and the child does not respond.
As I found a lack of suitable poems of the types I wanted, I began to write them myself for the children under my supervision, taking, in many cases, the ideas, humorous or whimsical, of the children themselves, as the theme of the poems. Finding them to be successful, I continued, until the suggestion was made to me that many children, other than those in my own school, might enjoy hearing and learning the poems. Accordingly this collection of verses is put forward in the hope that it will be a source of sincere enjoyment to the little people of the world.
ENID BLYTON.