A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children edited by Caroline Kennedy and illustrated by Jon J. Muth. I confess that when I first saw this book, I thought it would have the same old children's poets you find in every other children's anthology. I was surprised to see that she included poems by Christina Rossetti, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, and even Sylvia Plath! And the illustrations are beautiful. So, it's not just a book for young children; it's good for middle school and high school, too.
Editor (and poet) Liz Rosenberg has a number of poetry books for teens, my favorite of which is Earth-Shattering Poems. It includes a beautiful poem by Pablo Neruda called If You Forget Me, with the lines,
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
I also like her anthology The Invisible Ladder; it's all contemporary poets, and has a short biography of each.
One last book: Unleashed, Poems by Writers' Dogs, edited by Amy Hempel and Jim Shepard. Here's the beginning of Daisy, Five, Speaks to Sophia, Two by Ralph Lombreglia
I was here first.
I'm the real baby.
In a former life, it was me
who was cute, cute, cute.
