Children’s Poetry Library – serie

Featuring turbo-charged trees, double agent forests and leaves that perform magic, this is a wide-ranging collection of fun, lyrical and thought-provoking poems. Some have already appeared on programmes such as Blue Peter, Poetry Please and BBC Poetry Pie. Others have delighted audiences up and down the country. There are new poems that celebrate the outdoors, tree-climbing, forest school, ecological matters and nature in the city, alongside a smattering of favourites from previous anthologies and collections. As ever Andrew infuses the poems with his bonkers and surreal imagination.

In the Land of the Flibbertigibbets is a collection of playful poems and versatile verses bound to entertain and capture the imagination of the young reader. From poems about a wizard’s dragon and a dinosaurs’ health spa, nonsense versions of nursery rhymes and fantastic football results, to a cautionary tale about a boy who is always sticking his tongue out. These new poems for children aged 7 to 12, include wordplay poems about anagrams and homonyms, a word-building poem about how to make a teacher, a chant about onomatopoeia and a poem about peculiar plurals. Haikus and clerihews, epitaphs and epigrams, kennings and lists make up this inventive collection.

If You Could See Laughter is Mandy Coe’s first collection of poetry for children. An award-winning poet, Mandy Coe is an educational specialist in poetry in schools and has been commissioned by CBeebies, the Book Trust, the Barbican and National Poetry Day to write poems and educational material for children of all ages. Her poetry has been described as ‘…literally spell-binding’.

High Tide is a collection of the best of my poems for children written since 2002. This is a book of very accessible, crafted poetry for children of seven years old and upwards, with a balance of rhyming poems and non-rhyming poems, amusing poems and serious poems. It ranges from pieces about animals and nature to poems about space, school, and family. It includes some nonsense and riddles, and two long story poems.

The poems in Bookside Down are written about and for 21st Century children, who are into their friends, the TV, Wiis, DS’s, computers, collectibles and things that make them laugh. They deal with important matters such as difficult schoolmates, daft parents, impossible siblings, the last days of the dinosaurs and the death of planet earth. In this book you will find rhyming poems, non-rhyming poems, poems that are conversations and poems that tell stories. You could read them to yourself, read them aloud, or even use them as patterns to write your own poems.