Robert Hull

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Biographical note:  Robert Hull’s High Tide is his third collection of poems for children, it follows Stargrazer (Hodder, 1997), which was short-listed for the Signal Poetry Prize in 1998, and Everest and Chips, (Oxford University Press, 2002), short-listed for the CLPE prize. His fifty or so titles for children include collections of myths and folk-tales, one of which, West African Stories (Wayland) was short-listed for the 1999 Kurt Maschler Award. He regularly visits schools to run writing workshops, and is a regular contributor to educational magazines.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844715060
ISBN:  9781844715060
Author:  Robert Hull
Title:  High Tide
Series:  Children's Poetry Library
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  YCET2
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  18-Aug-10
Extent:  80pp
Height:  178 mm
Width:  110 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 6.99
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  This is a book of very accessible, crafted poetry for children of seven years old and upwards, with a balance of rhyming poems and non-rhyming poems, amusing poems and serious poems. It ranges from pieces about animals and nature to poems about space, school, and family. It includes some nonsense and riddles, and two long story poems.

Main description:  High Tide is a collection of the best of my poems for children written since 2002. This is a book of very accessible, crafted poetry for children of seven years old and upwards, with a balance of rhyming poems and non-rhyming poems, amusing poems and serious poems. It ranges from pieces about animals and nature to poems about space, school, and family. It includes some nonsense and riddles, and two long story poems.

Table of contents:
Acknowledgements
Space
Black hole
The Maker said
Beginnings
Snow
My coloured pens
Our short but interesting Greek bus journey
Hunting in February
Mr Frog,
Deer’s skull
Shadows
Frost
‘Please do not feed the animals …’
Starting School — Preston, 1912
‘Scary doesn’t have an e, James.’
English Rules — ’Don’t use “and” all the time’
Slovenly student, 1345
Recent history lesson
Peace process
Ping Feng
Frogs
Cat sisters
Table
Sorry, mouse
Things with feathers
Swallows in September
‘Gift offer — Traditional Wishing Well — £47.50’
Shopping at Christmas
The Tale of Sir Toby the Timid
Humpty, the true story
Shiny cheery poem
High tide
Seaside September
Useful phrases for when you’re on holiday …
Autumn Flood
Gnome at the Garden Centre
Evening song

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Excerpt from book:  

High Tide

Seaside autumn —
the dodgems are in hibernation,
all the rides are ridden.

Only a few loiterers
stare from under umbrellas
at the sand that’s still summer yellow
and the hard rain pimpling the harbour
and the tide turning back the river
that’s rising and rising
in the harbour in the rain.

Surely the tide’s high enough,
surely it’s finished coming in —
when men from the last fishing-boat
churning past in the rain
can peer into the tea-shops
on the harbour-side road
and read the menus outside.

One day sometime,
on an afternoon like this,
the tide will keep rising
and rising and some of the land
will come to an end.

The corner pub will need stilts then;
the fairground will be the foreshore,
only the castle with its tower
and the high rides will be open.

That day, one of the casual loiterers
watching the rising waters
will be caught unawares
and have to scramble the crinkly slide
to the crenellated battlements
and ask one of the stiffly gleaming
chocolate box soldiers
guarding the security light
if he could shelter inside
till the next — if there is one —
ebb tide.

Previous review quote:  The best newcomer is Robert Hull whose collection Stargrazer (Hodder and Stoughton) is wonderfully various, both in theme and form. It dips and delves into Roman history, Provencal legend, describes how shadows seem under bridges, retells, with a humorous lightness, Galileo’s story. This is a poetry book to make children feel and think simultaneously. Hull never patronises children by pretending to be one himself – he’s too mindful of their uniqueness to behave so improperly

New Statesman