Please Mrs Butler: The timeless school poetry collection

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The poet uses entertaining and simple-to-read language to describe a very unproductive conversation between a student and a teacher. Using anaphora, the poet describes the teacher telling her student to “sit in the hall” or “sit in the sink. The poems are evocative of a primary school day at school and with simple language, it is a collection of poems that a novice reader could certainly read without much help. The success of the poem, and the book as a whole, is that it speaks directly, humorously and humanely to children about everyday life in a situation they know well and spend most of their lives in: school. Also, one poem is about the teachers chilling out, drinking cups of tea, having a chat and smoking cigarettes at play time -it doesn’t ring very true any more, and not just because of the smoking ban - teachers today are run off their feet and don’t get to sit down!

In the first lines of this poem, the speaker, a young student, begins by asking their teacher what to do about a boy copying their school work. Emma graduated from East Carolina University with a BA in English, minor in Creative Writing, BFA in Fine Art, and BA in Art Histories. The teacher continually turns the problem back to the student, forcing them (if they can) to find solutions to their issues on their own.

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The italics used to emphasise the "our" and "other" make the verse very effective for reading aloud to a class, and the children can have great fun joining in with this. I still enjoyed reading the poems, and it is definitely worth a look for 'Emma Hackett's Newsbook' and 'Dog in the playground' alone.

As I re-read it now I enjoy the book as it focuses on the school environment however, there are better poem books out there that could be used in the classroom.

Poems such as: "small Quarrel" "Picking teams" "The gang" and so on could be read out loud to the whole class to get them thinking about issues in a subtle and non pressured way. The teacher offers strange and clearly hyperbolic solutions, like the student locking themselves in the cupboard or joining a ship and sailing away. There are many types of poetry used throughout the book, mainly written to sound like children speaking, and also full of humour.Ask children to note what is going on in each section, and to discuss how they think the story of the poem is moved on in each part.