Poems Every Child Should Know

An arrow flies into the air and disappears—while an owl and a p***y-cat sail off together. In Mary E. Burt’s pages, a nursery rhyme can sit beside a shipwreck, a battle cry, or a poem pondering how to live.

Assembled in the early twentieth century, this anthology ranges across British and American verse, from familiar songs and playful rhymes to stirring ballads and meditations on courage, loss, and time. Editor Mary E. Burt brings these poems together for young readers, trusting that a memorable rhythm or image can stay with a child long after the page is turned. But which lines will take root—and which will call to mind a world still larger than the poem itself?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.