Aimed at children and adults alike, these are funny, though at times serious, nonsense poems with a clear moral to be learned. Hilaire Belloc was born in 1870 in France, educated at Oxford and died in 1953. All his working life he was a journalist, while becoming famous as an essayist on social, political and Catholic issues. Though the style is now rather dated, such poetry was extremely popular in its day. It must be said, though, that only a few of the tales rise above absurdity and are both clever and amusing.