Small Poems for Big Imaginations – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Short playful poems with illustrations.
Children’s book title: Small Poems for Big Imaginations.
Children’s poets: Neal Zetter.
Children’s illustrator: Will Hughes.
Genre: Children’s poetry.
Published by: Otter-Barry Books.
ISBN: 9781915659873.
Recommended for children aged: 7+.
First published: Paperback January 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: children who enjoy wordplay, puns, acrostics and illustrated poems.
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Our review:
If I were asked to write a job-description for School Teacher In Charge Of Poetry I would start with this: Must be able to show children that poetry is play, whimsy, fancy and fantasy, and that even poetry regarded as the most serious and weighty is part of the game, using everyday words and constructions to point to the ineffable and mysterious in our imaginative engagement with the world, our lives and other people.
Neal Zetter would walk into that job. And I’d pay him double the going rate for it. If you want whimsy, fantasy, puns, playing around with the alphabet, daftness and acrostics, then look no further.
Here are a few examples:
The Loooooooongest Poem in the Universe
Welcome to the loooooooooongest poem in the Universe.
‘But it’s rather short!’ I hear you say.
Well, I’ve only just started writing it today….Limerick #1
A student of English, Dolores
Completely consumed a thesaurus
She struggled for ages
But ate all the pages
And now her vocab is colossal, huge,
gigantic, massive, vast, immense,
prodigious, large, sizeable,
extensive, considerable,
enormousMagical
Dressed in a smart suit of silver and black,
he produced twenty rabbits out of his hat,
sawed a man and a woman in half
as the audience shrieked!
As the audience gasped!While waving his magic wand around
he levitated high above the ground
pulled ten silk scarves from each of his ears,
yelled ‘Abracadabra!’
And – in a flash –
Disappeared!
The last word there appears half a page further on, making room for one of Will Hughes’ lovely illustrations, which feature on nearly every one of the eighty pages of this brilliant collection.
Many thanks to Otter-Barry Books for the review copy.
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