In both ‘Lullaby’ and ‘Children’s Song’ the speakers describe attitudes towards childhood. What are the similarities and/or differences between the ways the poets present these attitudes?
Answers
prepare developing minds for longer forms of literature. Yet it is a field under critical pressure, as poets, scholars, and parents regularly debate the defining characteristics of children's poetry. Sheila A. Egoff has questioned, "Is poetry for children a separate territory, or is poetry always simply itself, existing like folklore as a shared ground, held in common by both children and adults? If children's poetry is restricted to that written intentionally for children, does it include adult work chosen and adopted by children as their own? Does children's poetry require a simplification of style and subject matter because of childhood's limitations of experience? Or are such assumptions the result of artificial and patronizing adult attitudes?" There are vast differences in opinion regarding the best way to present poetry to children, with critics arguing over a range of topics from the appropriateness of subject material to the impact of didacticism to the literary quality of verse targeted at young readers. As a result, despite the wealth of picture books that utilize rhyming couplets and more mature verse collections for developing teens, the genre of children's poetry has gone largely unrecognized in literary and scholastic circles, with only two modern works receiving significant critical recognition—Nancy Willard's A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers (1981), a Caldecott Honor book in 1982, and Paul Fleischman's Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices (1988), the 1989 winner of the Newbery Medal.