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Find out moreChildren love poetry. Perfect for sharing at bedtime, fun time and for children to read alone. Always inspirational; collections of poetry will take the reader into another world.
The highly anticipated second novel from Carnegie shortlisted Dean Atta will not disappoint fans of his unmistakeably authentic and honest #ownvoices debut verse novel The Black Flamingo. Once again drawing on his own experiences, in this case of moving from London to Scotland, this novel revolves around Mack, who is forced to accompany his film maker father and sole parent to Glasgow, leaving behind his slowly blossoming relationship with his first love Karim, a basketball star and the hottest boy in school. Mack is a true romantic, openly and unashamedly gay but with low self esteem and high levels of anxiety. He doubts his busy father’s feelings for him and wonders if his two lifelong friends like him for more than his home cinema. K is very much still in the closet and can offer little reassurance especially at a distance. Meeting Finlay, the super confident gay star of his Dad’s film, and feeling an immediate connection creates a real moral dilemma for Mack. This is a wonderfully multi-layered depiction of complex characters and the verse novel format shows again that it is so well suited to capturing emotions. There is not just a beautiful economy of language but the spacing and layout on the page recreates the drama of each moment perfectly. There is warmth, humour, a real love for Glasgow and a positive celebration of love, diversity and inclusivity in this memorable and hugely engaging novel. A real must have for library collections.
This is a compendium of poetry full of different styles, different shapes and different rhyme schemes that makes a wonderful read out loud collection that should be in every classroom. Each poem comes with a suggestion of how it might be used or how children might read it to each other, or even act out the different verses of specific poems. The poems make you smile, make you laugh, make you think, and the bright illustrations add colour, humour and pathos to the collection. Both author and illustrator are prize winners in their own right - making this book a delight from start to finish. Everyone will enjoy reading it plus it can be used across a wide range of ages. If you have read their previous book Poems Aloud you will love this new collection.
From two bestselling and awardwinning creators comes a magical, lyrical celebration of babies' first experiences. From the comfort of home to the adventure of the great outdoors, from family to first encounters with nature, Welcome to the World revels in the joy that comes with sharing this new world with children, and seeing it through their eyes. A perfect read-aloud story for sharing from Julia Donaldson and Helen Oxenbury.
This punk rocker poodle is having a bad day and refusing everything including food, drinks brushing of teeth and washing. What happens when a young rebel decides that everything is just not right on this particular day? Absolutely everything that can be refused is refused, our hero wants to be left alone to do what they want without sharing, without eating, without rules. We all have days like this and can sympathise with our hero until, at last, tiredness sets in. There is nothing nicer when going to bed then a cuddle, a kiss and some warm milk to settle down for sleep. This is a gloriously anarchic look at a bad day for a toddler and would make good reading at the end of a difficult day. Presented as a poetic rap the rhyme and rhythm carry you through the difficult day for our grumpy youngster. Told with humour and warmth, full of colour this book will be a favourite for many young people.
This punk rocker poodle is having a bad day and refusing everything including food, drinks brushing of teeth and washing. What happens when a young rebel decides that everything is just not right on this particular day? Absolutely everything that can be refused is refused, our hero wants to be left alone to do what they want without sharing, without eating, without rules. We all have days like this and can sympathise with our hero until, at last, tiredness sets in. There is nothing nicer when going to bed then a cuddle, a kiss and some warm milk to settle down for sleep. This is a gloriously anarchic look at a bad day for a toddler and would make good reading at the end of a difficult day. Presented as a poetic rap the rhyme and rhythm carry you through the difficult day for our grumpy youngster. Told with humour and warmth, full of colour this book will be a favourite for many young people.
Telling the real-life story of Mona Baptiste, a Trinidadian singer who was brave enough to follow her dreams and ambitions across the sea on the Emperor Windrush. With gloriously evocative, almost technicolour illustrations, full of life and movement, we follow Mona as she grows up on Trinidad and her growing passion for singing. She sings at festivals and carnivals and seeing an advertisement for the Windrush sailing, she persuades her parents that this is what would make her dreams come true. In England she started singing everywhere ‘so people would get to know my name’. She sang in clubs, on radio and television and became highly celebrated in Europe. Sometimes life was tough and sometimes she had ‘ to be quite strong’ but this is a very positive inspirational story of a girl who fulfilled her dream. ‘ I wanted to sing for the whole world,/ and I wanted to sing for me,/That’s why I got on the Empire Windrush/ and sailed across the sea’ The rhythmic text is equally evocative, full of the cadences and musical lilt of the Caribbean. Providing a brilliant aspirational role model and a useful support to history and diversity collections, this is published in good time to celebrate Windrush Day on 22 June.
What an extraordinary family we meet in this glorious picture book. From magicians Uncle Marvello and Auntie Shazam (aka Eric and Pam) to speedy runaway Baby Cedric, to Auntie Amanda, teaching mice to dance, they’re all eccentric, unique and clearly great company. They spring to life in Quentin Blake’s illustrations, with flying elbows and dancing feet, John Yeoman’s rhyming text galloping along with them from page to page. This is undiluted fun from beginning to end and a joy to read and share.
March 2022 Debut of the Month | Ablaze with atmosphere and adventure, Akala’s The Dark Lady is a radiant, resonant tale of magic, a missing mother, and treachery in Elizabethan London. Fifteen-year-old Henry lives in poverty in the care of a pair of apothecary sisters. A skilled thief and writer of sonnets, he has an additional extraordinary gift — he “can close his eyes and read languages”. Letters become “colours, shapes, sounds and musical notes. Always a different pattern emerged and it was endlessly beautiful”. And, with brown skin inherited from his absent Beninese mother, Henry is subject to racism, with England’s insularity and prejudice pertinently portrayed — the rhetoric of foreigners “stealing jobs” is all too familiar. At the same time, there’s a seamless interweaving of Black history. For example, Henry is amazed to learn about Juan Latino, “a son of slaves who rose to become a professor of Latin at the University of Granada”. Then there’s reference to John Blanke, the famed black trumpeter from Henry VII’s court. Caught in the act of burgling a wealthy duke, Henry’s language magic earns him a seat at the duke’s opulent table, and grants him an audience with historic figures like Dr John Dee and his idol, Shakespeare. With a wicked sense of humour and pride, Henry is an enormously endearing young man, not least when he rubs his fine clothes and fancy talk in the face of a bigoted baker who previously refused to serve him. With the action never letting up, a succession of betrayal, intensifying dreams and discoveries about his mother steer Henry towards a land across the sea. Simply fabulous.
Shortlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize 2022 | Notes from the Klaus Flugge judges; A small child begins a magical journey on the back of a huge and beautiful baleen whale. Together they sail the oceans, dancing with dolphins, diving through the blue seas and exploring the ocean beds. The judges admired the way the illustrations carry the story “so that you are swimming with the whale”. Padmacandra’s images are full of atmosphere and beautiful to look at.
Poems are made to read OUT LOUD! A wittily illustrated anthology of poems, designed to be read aloud. Twenty poems by the award-winning Joseph Coelho arm children with techniques for lifting poetry off the page and performing with confidence. Perfect for confident children and shy readers alike, this book teaches all sorts of clever ways to performing poetry.
This is the second collaboration between Rosen and Starling, following the brilliant I Am Angry. Both take a poem from the award winning A Great Big Cuddle to give it new life as a picturebook and each poem really lends itself to a longer format with more opportunity for an illustrator to tell the story behind the poem and breathe life into the narrator. The bold colours and hugely expressive characters really grab the young reader’s attention, and the words are, of course, a joy to read-aloud. In an introduction the author tells us that when he is hungry, he likes to imagine all the things he might want to eat, and that often quite strange things pop into his mind and suggests this as an imaginative game to try at home. Certainly, this is what our very, very, hungry Squirrel does as his suggestions of what he could eat get increasingly bizarre. Young children delight in the absurd and have no fear of non-conformity and they also will recognise the feeling of being hungry being the most important thing in the world at that moment. A lovely book to inspire imaginative discussions in Reception and reflection upon their own younger selves!
“When you’re in a funk, you need poetry and funk”. What a strapline, and this cornucopia of reverse Parent Trap mayhem and real-life problems certainly lives up to its instant appeal. With lively illustrations by Mya Mitchell, Tasha Harrison’s Clementine Florentine is perfect for fans of Tom Gates, especially kids with a penchant for writing. Clementine Florentine is a bundle of energy and a keen poet who’s well and truly flipped into a funk when her dad starts dating her archenemy’s mum. Not only is Callum a poet, but he actually said Clementine’s poem was rubbish, so how can she possibly welcome him into her home? Worse still, what if Dad gets “slushy-mushy” over Callum’s mum and he ends up being her step-brother?! It seems to Clementine that she has little choice but to do all she can to end this outrageous situation. As it turns out, Callum isn’t happy either. In fact, he insists that “my parents are going to get back together”. Then, while they’re both implementing Operation Bad Romance, Clementine meets wonderful punk legend Lyn (and her pet parrot) who helps her understand the situation, and put things right. Infused with a valuable feelgood message about it always being possible to make amends and learn from your mistakes, this is a fun, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining read.
