Fred Sedgwick argues that through poetry, children can learn about the whole curriculum, including history and science. The book discusses poetry in terms of children's learning and the imagination. Case studies are used to show how children learn about themselves - first, their bodies, and second, their thoughts and emotions - through the writing of poetry. It then considers how children learn about their environment and the relationship between themselves and their environment. Finally, he discusses his techniques for getting children to write and provides recommendations for further reading.

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.