I am both a retired teacher and a prolific children's poet who has, in the last 5 years, written 900 new poems for children of every age. I have a website (Google JOSIE'S POEMS) which took my poems into 188 countries of the world last year and 602,000 pages were visited. The reason? I write with rhyme and with rhythm, as did the classic writers of poetry, and as our ancestors knew well, this type of poetry is not only easy to learn and remember, but it helps children to be able to break down words into sounds (for it is that which creates the rhythm in poetry) and thus helps them such a lot with reading. The free verse poetry, which has taken its place for many years, doesn't do this and as more and more has been fed to younger children, the lower their reading standards have gone down I'm afraid. Educational neuroscientists, Dr Usha Goswami and Dr Peter Bryant Watts have said for a while now that this type of poetry needs to come back for children even from as young as 2 and 3 years of age. Children love rhymes, love to repeat them and guess the rhyming word. Teachers are realizing the importance of this type of poetry, hence the huge numbers coming to my five websites for material for their classrooms.