Hide and Seek

• Hide and Seek


  A childhood game where some children hide while one child seeks
• Poem "Hide and Seek"


  • Focuses on the perspective of one child intent on winning the game
  • Describes the child's hiding spot and actions to avoid being found
  • Explores the child's emotions as they wait to be discovered
• Narrator: 'Call out call out loud I'm ready come and find me'
• Sacks in the tool shed


  Smell like the seaside
• Child hides in the tool shed

  They'll never find you in this salty dark
• The child is careful not to let their feet stick out from the hiding spot
• The floor of the tool shed is cold
• The child must not sneeze while the other children are searching
• The searching children


  Come prowling in and sound hushed
• The child holds their breath and stays completely still to avoid being discovered
• The searching children


  Stumble, mutter words, and then leave
• The child waits a while longer before coming out of their hiding spot
• Time passes


  It goes from daytime to nighttime
• The child's legs are stiff and the cold bites through their coat from waiting so long
• The dark, damp smell of sand fills the child's throat in the tool shed
• Child emerges from hiding


  1. Pushes off the sacks

  2. Uncurls and stretches
• Child: 'I've won here I am come and own up I've caught you'
• The darkening garden and silent bushes are the only things to witness the child's victory
• The other children who were searching

  Have abandoned the child and left to play elsewhere
• The child feels a sense of abandonment and isolation at the end of the game