Do Whales Jump at Night?: Poems for Kids

Laurence Steven is Chairman of the English Department at Laurentian
University and author of Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White’s
Fiction.

This anthology is a blessing to children’s poetry. Through poems that
are often thought-provoking, insightful, and easily relevant to a
child’s life, it shows children that there is a lot more to poetry
than limericks and nursery rhymes.

Since children don’t buy poetry, it is up to the editor to appeal to
the parents who might. McNeil succeeds quite nicely. Through familiar
subjects and humorous everyday experiences, she and her contributors (a
well-rounded selection of up-and-coming Canadian writers) introduce
children to the poetic character of the world around them.

The styles of the poems range from concrete to nonsense name rhymes.
Dennis Lee has had great success with this latter style, thus it was
inevitable that some contributors would also try their hands at it. In
“Of All Places,” a rhythmically delightful plethora of place names,
Sharon Stewart is successful. In “Heartbeat Rhythm,” a
cardiovascular name rhyme, Beverly Brenna is not—“Pulmonary,
coronary, / Ventricles, veins, / Atrium, aorta, /
Pericardium”—children do not read poetry with dictionaries in hand.

Poems must have an imaginative hook for children to grasp or they’ll
lose interest. The poems in this anthology generally provide those
hooks.