Charles Ghigna

5000 Poems  •  100 Books  •  150 Anthologies

Website created & curated by Debbie Ohi & Shane Stacks

The Father Goose House
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Bibliography of Books

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de Grummond Children's Literature Archive

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"Charles Ghigna is not only a seasoned serious poet,
but also one of the most popular writer's of imaginative verse for children today.
With more than 5,000 poems to his name for children and adults,
Ghigna is quite possibly the most prolific poet on the planet."
—Richard Armour

“Ghigna is versatile and ambitious, and has sharp eyes and ears.
He doesn’t just crystalize his own nightmares and dreams,
he imagines himself inside other people’s.
In such triumphant moments, Ghigna writes better
than just about any other poet I know.”
—X.J. Kennedy

“Ghigna belongs with the best of contemporary American poets.
He writes with great imagination, insight, wit and wisdom.
His work is always a revelation, a poignant reminder
of the pathos and beauty of the human condition.”
—Robert Hamblin

"Charles Ghigna's work is impressive for its perceptiveness, its verbal felicities, its craftsmanship.
He has a feeling for language, a sense of form, and he makes the experience he writes about
matter to himself and the reader."
—Robert Hayden

"Charles Ghigna is quite possibly one of the three or four best poets of his generation.
He is certainly the most enjoyable to read. His themes and subjects are the product of a sensibility
that is at once intensely emotional but strictly controlled.
Again and again the individual poems exhibit a rare and unusual mastery of his craft."
—Charles Henley

"Charles Ghigna is one of the finest poets of our time."
—Frye Gaillard

"Poetry is a language that speaks to the heart, and Charles Ghigna uses
that tender, heart-piercing language to bring us closer to his Southern soul."
—Patti Callahan Henry

"In lucid language charged with meaning, Ghigna carries us along on ventures
into the past that resist the sentimental and take us somewhere deeper: to the
suddenness of beauty, the surprise of death, and the holiness of life itself."
—Jennifer Horne

“Ghigna's poems are amazing playthings to amuse and delight.
They are especially fun to read aloud.”  
—The New York Times

"Charles Ghigna taps into childhood so amazingly well in this book.
The poems bring back such great memories, dreams, and fantasies of childhood.
Some poems will make children laugh, others will touch their hearts,
or reach deeper still to their soul, and others will open windows to new vistas."
—Han Nolan

 

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“Charles Ghigna’s world is different than ours.
He lives in a hundred-year-old cottage in the middle of Alabama.
His writing room is upstairs in the attic. He calls it his “Treehouse.”
He spends most days looking out the window daydreaming up new ideas to write about.
When he’s not writing, he’s traveling to schools, libraries, and book fairs.
Kids affectionately call him Father Goose.”
—Bill Caton, Fighting Words

So Who is Father Goose?

Charles Ghigna - FatherGoose® lives in a treehouse in the middle of Alabama.
He is a poet, children’s author, nationally syndicated feature writer and the
author of more than 5000 poems and one hundred books for children and adults
ranging from the 1990 Pulitzer Prize nominee Returning to Earth to the popular children’s book
The Father Goose Treasury of Poetry for Children. His books have been published by Disney,
Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster
and others. His poems for adults have been published in
Harper’s, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Saturday Evening Post and The Wall Street Journal.
His poems for children appear in Highlights for Children, Cricket, Ranger Rick, Humpty Dumpty,
Jack and Jill, Spider, Ladybug, Babybug, Caterpillar, Children’s Digest
and The School Magazine.

Ghigna served as poet-in-residence at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, instructor of creative writing
at Samford University, and has received fellowship grants and various awards and recognitions
from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation,
the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Library of Congress.
A popular speaker at schools, colleges, conferences, and libraries, Ghigna has spoken at the American
Library in Paris, and at schools in South America and Alaska, and at events throughout the U.S. and overseas.

 

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