Now children can claim for their very own the puddle-wonderful (mudluscious) world where buds know better than books don't grow, where little itchy mousies with scuttling eyes rustle and run and hidehidehide, and the ree ray rye roh rowster shouts rawrOO.

Cummings's poetry more than that of any other major American poet keeps faith with childhood. These twenty poems were selected by him and published privately in 1962. Hist Whist combines the original twenty poemes enfantins with the first appearance of the beautiful and evocative line drawings of the young California artist David Calsada. His sensitive pen has captured the spirit of Cummings's poems in its detailed rendering of a world that only poets and children can see.