Please join PEN in congratulating Mary Ann Hoberman, who will serve as the nation's second Children's Poet Laureate: Consultant in Children's Poetry to the Poetry Foundation for a two-year tenure. The award aims to raise awareness that children have a natural receptivity to poetry and are its most appreciative audience, especially when poems are written specifically for them.

"Generations of readers who first discovered poetry in the books of Mary Ann Hoberman remember it not as a dry textbook encounter but as a moment of joyous play. Her poems tease young minds even as they please young ears with rhythm and rhyme. We honor her for a lifetime of writing poetry of lasting value for young readers," said John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, in making the appointment.