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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.
Shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2018 | Longlisted for the UKLA 2018 Book Award | What a wonderful book to give to a child. It’s one which will inspire a real interest in nature and the creatures that share our planet, as well as an appreciation of art and poetry. Nicola Davies shares her delight in animals in specially written poems, each of which is illustrated by Petr Horacek across dazzling double pages. Grouped by themes such as colours and shapes, or animals in action, creatures big and small are vividly brought to life, from the whale shark, ‘like a piece of fallen starry sky’ to a barn owl, ‘quiet as the floating moon’. The images are breath-taking, full of movement and colour; the poems too are varied and memorable, sometimes precise, sometimes ethereal. It’s a book that recipients will treasure into adulthood.
Shortlisted for the CLPE Children’s Poetry Award (CLiPPA) 2017 Lewis Carroll's Alice has been enchanting children for 150 years. Curious Alice, the bossy White Rabbit, the formidable Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter are among the best-loved, most iconic literary creations of all time.
What do you mean you don’t like poetry? This must mean you’ve not read the debut collection of poems from Joshua Seigal! Whether it’s poems about the power of books or the joys of fried chicken, once you’ve read Joshua’s poems you’ll be shouting from the rooftops that poetry is the place to be! Packed with subversive humour and a real insight into the world of children today, I Don’t Like Poetry will please the most reluctant of poem readers whether they want something funny, sad or scary. It is a wonderful collection that shows a new poet at his best.
One of our Books of the Year 2016 | A Julia Eccleshare Pick of the Month September 2016 A fabulously rich anthology of 366 poems - one for every night of the year as promised in the title. Or for everyday if you would rather read your poetry and perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family. it. The anthology ranges widely through classic and modern poetry and, where there is a link to a particular date, it appears on that page in the book. Fittingly therefore, J. K . Rowling’s The Sorting Hat Song which first appears in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is the poem for 10 September – the start of the school year for many, even those not at Hogwarts. ~ Julia Eccleshare A message from Gaby Morgan, Editorial Director at Pan Macmillan A beautiful collection of 366 poems from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices, one to share on every night of the year. All the poems havea link to the date on which they appear, and the collection will take you on a journey through history, the season, and festivals and traditions from many different countries, cultures and religions. A message from the author, Allie Esiri William Wordsworth once wrote of beauty ‘felt along the heart’, like waves beating along a shore. We feel poems along the heart – they wash over us and, though we might not notice the impact they make, they leave the shores of our hearts a little changed. Great poems make us more human. They introduce us to new ways of seeing the world. They force us to imagine what it might be like to be someone completely different – and they show us that someone completely different is just as human as we are. When I discovered poetry as a child, I remember stumbling over weird and wonderful words whose meaning I felt far from understanding, but I think I knew then that poetry held an extraordinary power. My childhood private passion has become my career: I spend most of my time reading poetry, writing about poetry and banging the metaphorical drum for poetry. Over the past few years I’ve tried to remind people how remarkable and exhilarating poetry is. Poetry will stay with you for life. We use it to help us come to terms with the big things in life: love, friendship, loss, nature, beauty and the passing of time. People write and read poems for landmark events – weddings, funerals, political uproars or tragic disasters. But I wanted to share in this collection that poetry can also be for the small things in life, for the everyday. This anthology contains a poem for each and every night of the year. More than being just a sequence of beautiful poems to share at Introduction bedtime, however, this is a journey through culture and history and the seasons. Near April Fool’s Day are poems that are complete nonsense but huge fun to read aloud, such as Lewis Carroll’s bizarre ‘Jabberwocky’. And there are poems on certain dates that tell us about the traditions of other cultures and religions. There are poems written about historical events, like the sinking of the Titanic or the seminal moment in the Civil Rights Movement in America when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. I hope that there is a poem here for everyone – something for every night and every mood and every person, whose lines never leave you but remain inside the private library of your brain, and whose beauty you feel as Wordsworth did: along the heart. Julia Eccleshare's Picks of the Month for September 2016 A Poem for Every Night of the Year compliled by Allie Esiri Gruffalo Crumble and Other Recipes by Julia Donaldson A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston Beck by Mal Peet and Meg Rosoff Tom's Midnight Garden Graphic Novel by Philippa Pearce and Edith Jinks and O'Hare Funfair Repair by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntryre
Shortlisted for the CLPE Children’s Poetry Award (CLiPPA) 2017 Packed with silly rhymes, witty wordplay and thought-provoking story poems, this new collection of poems will delight children of all ages.
Brian Moses is one of our most widely read and popular poets, a regular visitor to schools and festivals. This collection gathers together over 100 of his best poems. It includes some of the poems that make his public performances such barnstorming hits – Walking With My Iguana, What Teachers Wear in Bed – but also more thoughtful poems, such as the beautiful title poem Lost Magic, with its mournful refrain ‘but there are no unicorns now’. My favourite is probably The Bonfire at Barton Point, a vivid description of a particular moment of childhood, but everyone will have their own. ~ Andrea Reece
Paul Cookson’s collection does not claim to be the definitive hundred brilliant poems, but it comes close; providing a fun, inspiring and diverse introduction to poetry for children. Not only are the classics of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Whitman out in force, but Cookson also introduces the delights of brand new poetry. His own poem ‘Let No One Steal Your Dreams’ is a beautiful and empowering opening, offering a message of encouragement that lingers in the mind as you read on. A collection to dip into before bed-time or to devour whole, which both children and adults will relish. A message from Gaby Morgan, Editorial Director at Pan Macmillan A gorgeous pick-and-mix packed with long-term favouries, song lyrics and brand-new delights. reading it out loud wull guarantee joy! It also includes some handy hints and starting points for reading, writing and performing at the back. A message from Paul Cookson Hello and welcome to 100 Brilliant Poems for Children. There will never be a definitive hundred brilliant poems . . . but I know that these are a hundred brilliant poems. I wanted to choose poems that have some sort of longevity: poems that are already classics, poems that are modern classics and poems that I feel will have a life beyond this book and become classics in their own right.The collection starts with my own ‘Let No One Steal Your Dreams’ – in fact, the idea for the collection started with that poem. It’s that feeling we are looking for – poems that inspire, and that are aspirational and entertaining in every way. I’ve chosen poems by my favourite poets, poems that I wish I’d written, poems that I’ll be forever jealous of and poems that have inspired me. I also wanted to include a few pieces that haven’t been seen before in a book for children. Words that have meant something to me, words that have touched me at particular times. I say words – as some of them began as songs I’ve played again and again, but with words that I feel work well as stand-alone poems. Not many songwriters are poets, but some are and I’ve included a few here – Billy Bragg, Michael McDermott, Nigel Stonier, Martin Stephenson, Henry Priestman (The Christians), Miles Hunt (The Wonder Stuff) and Stan Cullimore (The Housemartins). Check them out – I hope you like them. No, I’ll rephrase that – I hope you love them. Enjoy!
A wonderfully innovative collection bursting with energy, you can’t help but read with a smile. Chrissie Gittins is on a mission to save words from extinction, with forty exuberant and informative poems to celebrate amazing animals, birds and plants. The imagery is joyful; adders dance, beetroot paint your kitchen, and melons have an annual party, whilst Paul Bommer’s entertaining illustrations make the poems zing off the page. This is Gittins at her very best, playing with style and composition, and writing with zeal. Also check out BBC1 Countryfile on Sunday 22nd October for an interview with poet Chrissie Gittins. Chrissie is being filmed at the North Cornwall Book Festival talking about her latest children’s poetry collection ‘Adder, Bluebell, Lobster’. The book takes 40 of the 110 nature words deleted from the Oxford Junior Dictionary as titles for new poems.
Roald Dahl's wondercrump collection of animal rhymes featuring grisly beasts out for human blood, ranging from Gocky-Wock the crocodile to Sting-A-Ling the scorpion. With full colour illustrations by Quentin Blake this will make a wonderful addition to your 'forever keeps' pile.
Julia Eccleshare's Pick of the Month July 2016 A perfect celebration of Alice Day 2016, this beautiful, fully illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll’s great comic masterpiece which comes complete with gilt-edged pages and a ribbon for a marker, is the perfect gift book for all ages. The Hunting of the Snark, the riotous story of a motley crew’s journey to find the elusive Snark, has a cast of amazing characters including some from Carroll’s The Jabberwocky all of which Chris Riddell brings to life in glorious, brightly coloured caricatures. ~ Julia Eccleshare A message from Chris Riddell : This book is nonsense and, like all the best nonsense, it makes a special kind of sense. The hunting of a Snark is a very complicated business and I suspect that not even the Bellman himself really knows quite how to go about it. But that doesn’t stop him and his crew from pursuing the strange, elusive creature with all the tools at their disposal. Thimbles, forks, railway-shares and soap are all used, along with a lot of care, hope, threats and smiles, but not even the lace-making Beaver, ‘bounding along on the tip of its tail’, can get close. Then, after seven poetic convulsions, in a final ‘fit’ of energy, one of the crew spots a Snark and . . . But no, beamish readers, I won’t give away the ending at the beginning, that would be nonsense. Just let me say, beware of the Jubjub bird that sounds like ‘a pencil that squeaks on a slate’, the frume of the frumious Bandersnatch that can turn you black in the face and, most of all, hunt the Snark carefully, for it might be a Boojum, you see. Julia Eccleshare's Picks of the Month for July 2016 Melric and the Crown by David McKee The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by Chris Riddell Up, Up and Away by Tom McLaughlin Strange Star by Emma Carroll Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell Such Stuff: A Story-Maker's Inspiration by Michael Morpurgo
In dining halls of long ago When dinosaurs sat down to dine, Did prehistoric dinner-ladies Keep them all in line? What's the REAL reason the dinosaurs died out? Can anyone rescue Class 2M from the wild dinner-ladies? And what will happen when Class 2M meet a lion? This is a funny and brilliant debut collection from the author of the bestselling Stinkbomb and Ketchup-Face books.
Sport – winning, losing, taking part – is celebrated in this typically skilful collection from two of our most popular poets for young people. There are funny poems, story poems, contemplative ones to make you see things clearer or differently, and the poets even have a contest themselves, each one describing archery (too quiet for Moses, pure gold for Stevens). In a poem in four parts jointly written and placed strategically throughout the book they wittily compare the process of writing poetry itself to a marathon, from the early stages when confidence is high, to the last few miles when poems can ‘get puffed… sit down at the side of the page’. These are poems to be enjoyed and remembered long after the final medal has been awarded in Rio. ~ Andrea Reece
