All the Frogs (Children’s Poetry Library)

John Mole ranks with the finest of his contemporaries; poets such as Causley. Ted Hughes and Christopher Reid ... Mole's reader, for whose pleasure he writes – and never down – is the young person who understands, or – sometimes – nearly understands.

John Mole's poems for children are simply good poems which are accessible.

Great control and a variety of shapes and forms. Mole moves from the sharply comic to the evocative, and is good, as a poet should be, in suggesting things happening off the page.

Here now is another set of luminous and well-judged poems, never a phrase too many, never one short, demonstrating that there is infinitely more to the good poem than the number of words lying on the page. John Mole loves language, uses it with subtlety and skill, and is quite unafraid of making demands on his young audience. The effect, quietly engineered, is always arresting, often surprising. The pictures they paint, the sentiments they express, seem to dissolve and reassemble before one's eyes as if by some process of magic. The work of a true poet.

It is always been one of Mole's strengths, as he exploits the two-way traffic between both.

In numerous courses, informal talks to teachers, and in readings to children, I don't think I've recommended any poet more often than John Mole in recent years.

He is one of the best and already has many fans.

A new John Mole collection is good news.