By Paul Muldoon Dibby Dubby Dhu: Selected Poems for Children By george barker Faber pound;8.99 each Muldoon’s wordplay is dazzling, taxing, full of puns and sounds and recondite references. This is a tougher, darker, drier book than The Last Thesaurus. The “Colossal Glossary” at the end of the earlier book has grown out of its own skin and into an even more dazzling poem for children who simply rejoice in words and do not always want simplicity.

Dibby Dubby Dhu, Elspeth Barker’s selection of George’s poems, is another necessary volume in the same series, with its own dark challenges, but with a wider reach of song and sheer fantasy to leaven it. Catherine Byron (TES, April 11)