Gingerbread Pigs and other rhymes

We need anthologies to introduce the very young to poetry and this gap is being slowly filled (see Jill Bennett's Roger was a Razor Fish, Bodley Head). I'm not wholly convinced that this collection meets the needs of five and six-year-olds who are beginning to play with language for the fun of it. A lot of it is below the standard of writing we should be looking for in such anthologies. The splendidly intricate, sometimes delicately surreal pictures by Caroline McDonald Paul are lovely though: I wish she could have been given the opportunity to illustrate a more interesting collection.