Discover Your Favorite: 15 Poems Every Kid Should Know

What are your kid’s favorite poems? Ask any parent, teacher or poetry lover what poems are their favorites and you’ll get 15 different answers. Well, and maybe a few overlaps.

I did just that recently—surveyed a group of parents, grandparents, and teachers and asked them to name the top 15 poems every kid should know. The responses were deep and wide as you might expect. But there was one poem that kept showing up again and again. Can you guess it?

The Award for ‘Most Frequently Nominated Poem’

The poem that parents, poets and teachers alike listed the most? ‘Jabberwocky’ from the Alice books by Lewis Carroll. Carroll penned the silly rhymes in 1871. Since then Jabberwocky has found its way into many hearts and minds, standing the test of time, and no wonder. What child (or adult) wouldn’t want to memorize these nonsensical verses?​

If you need a refresher, here are the opening lines:

Jabberwocky By Lewis Carroll, 1871

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.’

Kids of all ages enjoy this entire poem regardless of the fact the words make no sense…. What’s a slithy tove or a borogove? I have no idea but I still understand the poem! 

Free Downloadable Resource: If you want an activity using these nonsense words in ‘Jabberwocky’ as a vocab and grammar lesson for kids, you can find that via this link​.

Find Your Kid’s Favorite Poems

So how do you find your kid’s favorite poem? While Jabberwocky was the clear winner of my survey, there are numerous poems on the list to help your kids find ones they like.

Which poems did survey readers say every kid should know? As I collated the list with their input, narrowing the list down to only 15 was nigh impossible! I combined the choices, including classics from poets like Emily Dickinson and Tennyson, plus some fun rhymes from A.A. Milne. There are many memorizable verses plus two bonus limericks for kids ages 5-15+.

So, without further ado, I offer you a list of poems below to search out (truly just type the name into Google and you’ll find the poem) to help your kids find their favorite poem. Keep the poetry reading (and listening!) going with kids–nieces, nephews, grandkids, neighbor kids or grandkids. The list will help you start.

And no doubt you’ll find some poems you like as well. Print the list, search up the titles and begin gathering them into a Poetry Folder. Click here and find this resource plus many other free downloads and keep the poetry learning fresh. Just 5 minutes a day can help you and your kids make friends with poetry!

15 Poems Every Kid Should Know (ages 5-15+)

1. Afternoon on a Hill, Edna St Vincent Millay, 1917 

2. Daffodils (I wandered lonely as a cloud), William Wordsworth, 1802 

3. Disobedience, Alan Alexander Milne, 1924 

4. Good Morning, from Pippa Passes, Robert Browning, 1841 

5. Hurt no Living Thing, Christina Rossetti, 1872 

6. Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll, 1871 

7. My Shadow, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885 

8. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost, 1922 

9. The Arrow and The Song, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1845 

10. The Eagle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1851 

11. The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats, 1890 

12. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost, 1915 

13. The Tyger, William Blake, 1794 

14. There is No Frigate Like a Book, Emily Dickinson, 1861 

15. Who Has Seen the Wind? Christina Rossetti, 1847 

Bonus Limericks and Honorable Mention

• There Was an Old Man with a Beard and There Was an Old Man in a Garden, Edward Lear, 1846​
• The Frog, Hillaire Belloc, 1896

Poems in the Public Domain

It is imperative to note that each poem in this list is in the public domain. This important choice ensures you and I both can copy, download, and print the poems freely. As the saying goes, “attribution does not equal permission,” i.e. I may cite the source for a poem to tell readers where to find it but that doesn’t mean I have permission to share/print it without contacting the author or their estate.

Although many survey responders included them, you may be wondering why popular Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein poems weren’t listed. Their work is not in the public domain; the Seuss and Silverstein estates guard written work very carefully. (Ditto for work by C.S. Lewis or Mary Oliver.)**

Download and Print the 15 Poems Every Kid Should Know

Interested in printing the full list of poems? I’ve created a downloadable PDF for you in the Resource Library. Click the button below to download 15 Poems Every Kid Should Know PDF and feel free to grab a few more resources while you are there! Not sure where to start? Look for 10 Best Poetry Collections for Children.

Take 5 minutes to for poetry today and and at the end of the year you’ll have a Poetry Notebook with your children’s favorite poems!

i’D lOVE TO kNOW…

So tell me in the comments, what was your favorite poem as a kid? What is your kid’s favorite poem today? Maybe they’ll appear on the next list!

**You might find this helpful: Any poem published before Jan 1, 1923, is in the public domain in the United States. The standard U.S. copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years. (for reference, C.S. Lewis passed away in 1963, Mary Oliver in 2019.)