Squeak, Squawk, Roar!: Amazing Animal Poems

by Kate Williams, Hannah Asen (illustrator)

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2025

Reviews

[Kay]

I enjoy reading and rereading Squeak, Squawk Roar!, where readers can enjoy the poems of peacocks' gleaming sheens of ocean greens or a rhinoceros who'd like to be the boss of us and elephants with their mighty fine tusks roaring and trumpeting the word mine.

It's a poetry book with a beautiful, perfect, and powerful last line. But just before, there is fun for us with the clever, engaging poem about choosing creature features we'd love to have, celebrating a gerbil's shyness, dolphins' charms and many more animal features.

[Emily Jones]

Nice

[Sarah Ziman]

As a veteran contributor to many anthologies for children, Kate Williams’ first solo collection has been long awaited and does not disappoint! Ideal for KS1 and up, we meet a whole menagerie of animals in ‘Squeak! Squawk! Roar!’, from the antics of the cute and cuddly pet variety (Hamster on the Loose) to those that are owned only in the imagination (Pony Friend, Secret Pet), as well as creatures that children might be able to spot in their own environment (the ‘abracadazzle’ of the red dragonfly in Summer Magic, or a the ‘red flash’ of the Fox Trot), local countryside or the zoo, not forgetting those they are less likely to have a personal encounter with, whether it’s the mother polar bear affected by climate change in the lullaby-esque While Baby Sleeps, or the mysterious shoal of lamplit lanternfish in the ‘no-go, no-show, never-know deep’ (Secret-Deep).

There is plenty of fun for young readers, of course, but with a light touch and skilful word-wrangling. There are observant juxtapositions as in Mouse’s Houses (whether mouse is inside or outside determines whether the sight is ‘charming’ or ‘alarming’, whether mouse is ‘dainty’ and ‘dinky’, or ‘dirty’ and ‘stinky’, greeted with an ‘Aww!’ or an ‘Aagh!’), an introduction to kennings in Havoc-Wreakers’ description of seagulls, and a wistful cleverness to the short poem about the mighty Albatross: ‘so bright, so white/so graceful, so grand/so calm/so strong/solo’. There are also clever riddles, pitched just right for the audience to be able to solve them.

A great choice for primary school libraries and bedroom bookshelves alike!

[Jonathan Sellars]

A wonderfully imaginative collection of poems. It's like having the whole animal kingdom condensed into a 100 pages of perfect poetry.