A Child’s First Book of Poems with pictures by Cyndy Szekeres, 1981.

I think this actually might have been my first book of poetry. At least, I’ve had it since I was a fairly young child, and I can’t remember reading any other book of poetry before this one. If I had an earlier book of poetry, it was probably a book of Mother Goose rhymes.

The poems in the book are about a variety of topics and some of them are by famous people and were popular poems for decades before this book was published. Among the authors whose poems appear in this book are Emily Dickinson, A.A. Milne, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Among my favorite poems in the book:

Wild Beasts by Evaleen Stein – About children pretending to be animals.
Choosing by Eleanor Farjeon – About choosing between various nice things.
Hiding by Dorothy Aldis – A child hides while his parents search for him. My mother often quoted from this poem when we were kids and she was looking for one of us. “I’m hiding, I’m hiding, and no one knows where …”
The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson – I think of this poem whenever I’m on a swing.
Bedtime by Eleanor Farjeon – Children making excuses to stay up later.

The pictures really make this book special. They are all drawn in a realistic style. Some just show ordinary children and animals, but some contain whimsical elements, like animals wearing clothes, depending on the poem.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.