I've been taken by surprise at the sheer number of poems Ted Hughes wrote for Moon Whales and other Moon Poems. I've never actually owned a copy of the collection, though I'm very familiar with a number of the poems from encounters in various anthologies, and I've always taken it for granted that the original book was about the same length as Meet My Folks. But reading the Moon poems as they are sequenced in Ted Hughes: Collected Poems for Children it's obvious that this book was not intended in any way as a kind of companion to the earlier publication.
Indeed, the general tone is quite different. I think it's reasonable to say that Meet My Folks is essentially comically cheerful. Moon Poems is often downright disturbing. The rhythms are more obviously galumphingly broken; the images surreally weird so that what might have been intended as funny isn't, except in a funny strange way.
As evidence, the opening lines of The Snail of the Moon:
Saddest of all things on the moon is the snail without a shell. / You locate him by his wail, a wail heart-rending and terrible...
Not sure I'd want to read that out to a class of ten-year-olds. But I love reading it to myself.
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