Includes index.

Introduction / John Hollander -- Three with wings / Arikida Moritake, Basho, Ampu -- Tyger / William Blake -- Elephant / Hilaire Belloc -- Oven bird / Robert Frost -- Narrow fellow / Emily Dickinson -- Jelly-fish / Marianne Moore -- To a Chameleon / Marianne Moore -- Sloth / Theodore Roethke -- Fable / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Owl and the pussy-cat / Edward Lear -- Frog and the mouse / Anonymous -- Man-of-war hawk / Herman Melville -- Rats / Georg Trakl -- Earthy anecdote / Wallace Stevens -- How doth the little crocodile / Lewis Carroll -- Little fish / D. H. Lawrence -- To the grasshopper and the cricket / Leigh Hunt -- On the grasshopper and cricket / John Keats -- Eagle / Alfred, Lord Tennyson -- Clock-a-clay / John Clare -- Gulls / William Carlos Williams -- Bison Crossing near Mt. Rushmore / May Swenson -- Cat and the moon / William Butler Yeats -- Crow and the fox / Jean de La Fontaine -- Riding a nervous horse / Vicki Hearne -- Noiseless, patient spider / Walt Whitman -- Frog and toad / Christina Rossetti -- Word for the dumb / Christina Rossetti -- To a butterfly / William Wordsworth -- Hunting song of the Seeonee pack / Rudyard Kipling -- To a squirrel at Kyle-na-no / William Butler Yeats -- Creatures rest / Alcman.

Offers thirty-two poems about animals by various poets, including Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, and Vicki Hearne. The writers include Blake, Dickinson, Tennyson, Yeats, Wordsworth, and Keats. The captivating paintings by Simona Mulazanni make every page a delight. And the subject, animals, big and small, wild and tame has an irresistible appeal to children. William Blake's The Tyger burns bright in the lush image that accompanies the verse. Hillaire Belloc pays tribute to an elephant in a short, witty stanza accompanied by an adorable picture of the creature sitting on a small wood stool. Among the other poems are Marianne Moore's A Jellyfish and Edward Lear's charming, songlike The Owl and the Pussycat. A Selection of Scholastic Book Clubs, John Hollander has written A Crackling of Thorns (chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets), as well as literary criticism and children's books. He has served as editor for many poetry collections, among them An Anthology of Poems for Young People (with Harold Bloom). He is currently the Sterling Professor of English at Yale. Simona Mulazanni is a successful and much loved children?s book artist in Italy.