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|title=I am a Poetato

|author=John Hegley

|publisher=Frances Lincoln

|date=October 2013

|website=http://www.johnhegley.co.uk/

|summary=An A to Z of poems about animals, people and poetry as seen through the eyes of performance poet John Hegley.

}}

In this collection John Hegley says that poetry is like music in that to understand it ''sometimes…you need more than one go at it''. There is certainly more going on with John Hegley’s poems than a first read through reveals. So though ''I am a Poetato'' has been published as a book for children, these are poems for everyone and contain a lot for readers of any age to enjoy.

The one thing that I hesitated over with this book had nothing to do with the poetry. It was the overall design of the book itself. The end papers are eye catching, very 1950’s ''letter boxes'' by Helen Rawlinson. Inside the pages capture the process of the poems being written by presenting them on different types of paper. There’s graph paper, pages taken from notepads, pages scrunched up ready to go in the bin then straightened out and reused. The effect adds immediacy and is great, but it’s all done in shades of grey. By the end of the book I was desperate for some colour and I suspect that younger readers might be too. Or is that just me? What do you think?

If you like John Hegley you will probably love [[A Children's Treasury of Milligan by Spike Milligan]].

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