Everybody Was a Baby Once and Other Poems

This collection of poems features comical children's poems about a wide variety of topics. Most of the poems deal with events that occur in a young child's life, so they are easily accessible themes for children of all ages. 

Although I thought this book was good, I thought it lacked a point and really wasn't engaging enough to warrant using it in my own classroom. It explores some themes that I could potentially use in my classroom and with children, but I don't think that the book as a whole works cohesively enough to do this. 

Additionally, there are some topics that are explored that have deeper, more mature content. Some of the language is very advanced or antiquated, even though this book was published in 2010. There were points were I wondered what words meant because I had never heard them before. Upon looking them up, it was pretty clear that they were words that were once used, but no longer are a part of children's or adult's everyday vocabulary. I found this odd and a little unrelatable. 

Although I don't feel as though this book would add value to my classroom library, there are simple structures within it that would work to introduce rhyme and poetic techniques that we see in writing. These could be pulled out of the collection to model something to students or simply used in isolation to teach a point. 

Everybody Was a Baby Once and Other Poems 
By: Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman 
Published in 2010