Long ago wandering minstrels went from village to village singing songs and telling stories. Often there would be a piper, too, who played the accompaniment on his reed flute. When people heard a song they liked particularly, they would cry, "Piper, pipe that song again!"

We have no wandering minstrels today, but we do have books of poetry. And in many ways they are alike. For a poem is meant to be heard. Like a song, it has a melody of its own.

The poems in this volume are those that boys and girls like to read again and again. Some of the poems have a gay, jiggling melody and words that start a gale of giggles. In others the melody moves more slowly, the words are those you ponder over.

There are poems about animals and freight trains and twilight, about a city fog and signs of spring, about a missing mouse and a bear-eating maiden. Five of the poems are so old no one knows who wrote them. The others are by some of the best-known poets in English and American literature: William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Walter de la Mare, Langston Hughes, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, A. A. Milne, Alfred Noyes, John Ciardi and many more.

Kelly Oechsli's freshly imaginative drawings make this a book for all ages to cherish.

From the dust jacket