In this fifth and final installment in

It’s very difficult to select only  five children’s poets—there are many more whose work I enjoy and admire. The five collections that I picked just happened to call out to me when I looked at my bookshelves this morning. At another time I might have chosen five completely different ones. All of these poets have inspired me at various times in my writing life. Here are five titles, in alphabetical order by poet.

Out in the Dark and Daylight (HarperCollins,1980) by Aileen Lucia Fisher. The poet has a wonderful feel for nature and takes great delight in the world around her.

Exploding Gravy: Poems to make You Laugh (Little, Brown, 2002) by X. J. Kennedy, illustrated by Joy Allen. These poems tickle my funny bone. The poet knows how to make words dance.

Moon, Have You Met My Mother? The Collected Poems of Karla Kuskin (HarperCollins, 2003), illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier. [Kuskin] was one of the first children’s poets I read when I started writing my own poems. Many of her poems are deceptively simple.

Custard and Company: Poems by Ogden Nash (Little, Brown, 1980), selected and illustrated by Quentin Blake. There are quite a few poems I never wrote because [Nash] wrote them first. I still marvel at his wit and craftsmanship.

Laughing Time: Collected Nonsense. (Delacorte, 1990) by William Jay Smith, illustrated by Fernando Krahn. Not only has [Smith] written wonderful children’s poems, he was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1968 to 1970. The poet turned 95 on April 22. Happy birthday!

In our next installment in

As co-host of the “Poetry Blast,” a reading by children’s poets, I have had the good fortune to read and to hear poems read by a wealth of wonderful poets, so it’s hard to select my favorite books. But here are five that my bookshelves can’t do without:

Master of “shaped poems,” Arnold Adoff celebrates the blues and its origins, painful and hopeful, in the stellar book, Roots and Blues: A Celebration (Clarion, 2011). When a book of poems about music sounds like music, it makes me want to sing.

I’ve always liked Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, with its multiple narrators and their varied stories. Walter Dean Myers creates this tapestry of characters with distinct voices and tales and places them in the vibrant locale of Harlem in his amazing Here in Harlem: Poems in Many Voices (Holiday House, 2004). Quite a feat!

I really appreciate poets who play with form. When I read Bob Raczka’s Lemonade: And Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word (Roaring Brook, 2011), in which he takes a word and rearranges the letters to make new words that form a poem, I squealed with pleasure.

One of the best collections of poems about a single subject that I’ve ever come across is Alice Schertle’s How Now, Brown Cow? (Browndeer, 1994). How good is it?  Recently, Jane Yolen (another poet I greatly admire) and I, unbeknownst to each other, selected the same poem from it to illustrate how to write a perfect humorous poem!

I got introduced to Joyce Sidman’s poetry when I was one of the judges for the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, and I’ve loved her work ever since. That year, we selected the elegant Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems (Houghton Harcourt, 2005) as the winner.  It remains, for me, a classic example of wonderful poems combined with informative prose.”

Ogden Nash’s Zoo (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1987) by Ogden Nash. Edited by Roy Finamore. Illustrations by Etienne Delessert. “Short and pithy poems about animals, real and imaginary, along with superb humorous illustrations by Etienne Delessert.I first encountered these when I was in the fifth grade.”

A Hippopotamusn’t (Dial, 1990) by J. Patrick Lewis. Illustrations by Victoria Chess. “Wonderfully witty hilarious poems with a wide variety of forms in rhyme and rhythm. The grotesque paintings by Chess add to the fun.”

Runaway Opposites: Poems (Harcourt, 1995) by Richard Wilbur. Illustrations by Henrik Drescher. “Poems that surprise and delight in unexpected ways. The collage paintings by Drescher are amazingly dazzling and truly compliment the zaniness of the verse.”

Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) by Joyce Sidman. Illustrations by Beckie Prange. “Lyrical poignant poems and splendid watercolors paintings explore life in a pond with much depth and fluidity.”

Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse (Dutton, 2010)  by Marilyn Singer. Illustrations by Josee Masse. “Inventive poems that inspire and ignite imaginations.”

Festival in My Heart: Poems by Japanese Children. Selected and translated by Bruno Navasky. Abrams. 1993. “Stunning, deeply imagistic and tactile fabulous poems by kids for kids—extremely stimulating as classroom writing prompts and delicious for all to contemplate.”

Fire in the Sea: An Anthology of Poetry & Art. Selected by Sue Cowing. University of Hawaii Pr. 1996. “More than 150 nourishing and dazzling poems from many Pacific islands as well as writers all over the world, mixed in savory fashion with artwork from the Honolulu Academy of Arts. You have a great classroom guide to poetry with this volume alone.”

Ten-Second Rainshowers: Poems by Young People. Compiled by Sandford Lyne, with illustrations by Virginia Halstead. S & S. 1996. “I fell in love with this book the first time I ever held it, the freshness and glory of its poems and images, and wish Sandy Lyne had lived forever. In the spirit of this book alone, he does.”

Strings: A Gathering of Family Poems. Selected by Paul Janeczko. Bradbury Pr. 1984. “Paul Janeczko’s anthologies of poems for young readers fill up a whole shelf but this remains one of my favorites, since writing about family is one of the most enduring and compelling topics for so many young poets.”

Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry. Selected and introduced by Billy Collins. Random. 2003. “This rich and lively poetry collection is terrific for middle school, high school, and adult readers. Every high school I work in, some kind teacher or another mentions that it changed his or her life and made the experience of sharing poetry so much happier.  There is also a sequel called 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day.”

There’s April in Paris. April is also School Library Month, National Autism Awareness Month, the start of a brand-new Major League Baseball season, and according to T. S. Eliot, it’s the cruelest month around. But what really gets us stoked is that April is National Poetry Month. (The Academy of American Poets launched it in 1996.)

To help celebrate this month’s versified event, we asked some of the bards whom we most admire to weigh-in on their five favorite collections for kids. We’ll be posting at least one new list each week of the month. And there’s no better way to kick off the series than with our nation’s current children’s poet laureate, J. Patrick Lewis. Here are Pat’s picks:

X. J. Kennedy and Dorothy Kennedy, eds. Talking Like the Rain: A Read-to-Me Book of Poems. Little, Brown. 1992 (pap. 2010). With impeccable selections by the Kennedys and delightful illustrations by Jane Dyer, this lavish anthology of children’s poems deserves pride of place in every elementary classroom and on every child’s bookshelf.

Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, eds. The Rattle Bag. Faber and Faber. 1982. For its most welcome verse surprises on virtually every page—most of them unknown on this side of the pond—The Rattle Bag remains the very best collection of poems for older children and young adults. And it is chugging along even after 30 years.

Jack Prelutsky, ed. The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. Random. 1983. A newer and shorter Prelutsky/Random House anthology, The 20th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury, 1999, is fine in its own right, but it does not surpass this bedrock miscellany of 572 “poems for today’s child,” evoked in Arnold Lobel’s signature illustrations.

Paul B. Janeczko, ed. Seeing the Blue Between: Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets. Candlewick. 2002. This unusual collection features children’s poems alongside commentary by the poets themselves. If you ever wondered what advice poets might have for beginning writers, Seeing the Blue Between is an invaluable primer.

Lee Bennett Hopkins, ed. Ring Out Wild Bells: Poems about Holidays and Seasons, Harcourt. 1992. No one should be asked to choose the “best” anthology by the indefatigable Hopkins, but Ring Out Wild Bells may be primus inter pares. Holiday poems—classics and some that bid fair to become classics—fill the pages of this excellent garland to the seasons.