Review: Poems to Save the World With

In 2018, Chris Riddell chose and illustrated a collection of 46 poems. Poems to Live Your Life By came in eight sections as diverse as possible. 

In late 2019, Riddell gifted us, Poems to Fall in Love With, chosen classic and modern favourites which celebrate love in all its forms, decorating the pages with artistic expression.

Poems to Save the World With, presented in six sections, brings poems on advice, hope, happiness, compassion, acceptance and reflection in a time when all these things in life are so important.

The contents of this third collection, like the others, are as different as the days of the week and as powerful as a full blown storm. Poems of reassurance that people are fine the way they are, random acts of kindness, and an encouraging word that may save a person’s life, will move and change you.

Standouts are The Mushroom Hunters and What You Need to be Warm by Neil Gaiman, A Word of Advice by Libby Russell, Kindness by Nikita Gill. (I would gladly list the remainder of all the collection here, but won’t.)

The poetry is taken from: Emily Dickinson, William Blake, The Ecclesiastics, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Rudyard Kipling and other well-known and not so well known poets.

True to the times, the collection ends with poems about Lockdown.

Riddell’s illustrations are wisps of ink on the page. Fine-lined with a feather-touch, they appear to have landed on the paper as lightly as a floating flake. Simply perfect!

This book is influential. It will send you to your nearest book supplier to buy his other titles. You have been warned!

Title: Poems to Save the World With
Author/Illustrator: Chris Riddell
Publisher: Pan Macmillan, $ 26.99
Publication Date: 17 September 2020
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781529040111
For ages: 12+
Type: Poetry