No catches, no fine print just unconditional book loving for your children with their favourites saved to their own digital bookshelf.
New members get entered into our monthly draw to win £100 to spend in your local bookshop plus lots lots more...
Find out moreAre you a fan of Poetry books? Check out all of our Poetry book selections, read reviews, download extracts and you can order the book too!
Six bouncy poems each of which is richly illustrated by award-winning illustrator Nick Sharratt. Burt, Cora, Charlie, Selwin, Ida and Quentin are the six Vikings let loose on a delightful shopping spree in a supermarket in the title poem. More reflective is The Mermaid and the Shoe. What would a mermaid do with a shoe? There are lots of watery ideas from using it as a little sailing boat to wearing it as a hat! The Tidy Pirate gives pirates an entertaining brush up while Fangsalot imagines what would happen if a vampire bat bit a cat, a cat bit a cow, a cow bit a horse – and so on! ~ Julia Eccleshare
Featuring a fantastic range of children's poets and five exciting themes with full-colour illustrations, this is the ideal approach to encourage a love of reading, whilst developing an understanding of poetry, meeting the new requirements of the National Curriculum. The collection has been carefully selected for children in Year 3 of school and includes helpful parent notes for every poem and a glossary of key terms from the series editor and children's poet, John Foster. It is the third of three poetry collections that will support your child from learning to read in Year 1 through to understanding themes and developing vocabulary in Year 3. This collection of poetry has the perfect balance of engaging rhyme, familiar themes and amusing illustrations to promote a lifelong love of reading.
When words in verse are paired with the awesomeness of nature, something magical happens! Beloved former U.S. Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis curates an exhuberant poetic celebration of the natural world in this stellar collection of nature poems.
Julia Eccleshare's Pick of the Month, October 2015 Six bouncy poems each of which is richly illustrated by award-winning illustrator Nick Sharratt. Burt, Cora, Charlie, Selwin, Ida and Quentin are the six Vikings let loose on a delightful shopping spree in a supermarket in the title poem. More reflective is The Mermaid and the Shoe. What would a mermaid do with a shoe? There are lots of watery ideas from using it as a little sailing boat to wearing it as a hat! The Tidy Pirate gives pirates an entertaining brush up while Fangsalot imagines what would happen if a vampire bat bit a cat, a cat bit a cow, a cow bit a horse – and so on! ~ Julia Eccleshare
Colin West writes wonderfully funny poetry for children and deserves to be a household name alongside Roger McGough and Michael Rosen. This collection is divided into sections including Dotty Ditties, Tricky Tongue-Twisters, Vicious Verses and Curious Creatures and is jam-packed with poems to make the reader laugh. As well as the eponymous budgie (A budgie’s not for nudging/and a budgie bears a grudge), there are hedgehogs, giraffes, alligators, jugglers and pirates – a huge variety of subjects - there are one hundred poems in fact, and each one is a little gem. Colin West’s own illustrations accompany his verses and add to the many pleasures of this book. ~ Andrea Reece
It’s spook o’clock alright in this excellent collection of scary poems and what a range of subject, tone and form there is to enjoy. Here are funny poems – of course - some silly ones, and some that are really quite haunting. A number are inspired by real places – Brian Moses takes us on an Edinburgh ghost walk ‘half hoping something will appear/half hoping something won’t’ and wonders how it would affect you to live in World’s End, while James Carter imagines scary things lurking in the teacher’s cupboard! They’ve obviously relished creating this collection, and their enthusiasm is catching. Illustrations by Chris Garbutt add to the fun and with Hallowe’en approaching, there are tricks and treats aplenty here. ~ Andrea Reece
Shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2017 | Joint Winner of the CLiPPA 2016 (CLPE Children’s Poetry Award). | Children’s Laureates Chris Riddell and Michael Rosen combine here to create a beautiful collection of ebullient poems for the very young. Michael Rosen’s close and affectionate observation of small children and the way they think is brilliantly captured in poems such as You Can’t See Me and Let Me Do It. There are also plenty of opportunities for the very young to join in with poems such as Tippy-Tappy and The Button Bop which they are guaranteed to want to hear again and again! Chris Riddell’s illustrations created an equally warm-hearted view of the early years and capture the spirit of the poems perfectly. One of our Books of the Year 2015 - A Reader Review Panel Pick of the Year 2015 - chosen by Robyn Chorely, aged 5- Julia Eccleshare's Book of the Month, September 2015
This is the second of Walter de la Mare’s poems to be turned into a picture book by Carolina Rabei and her illustrations provide a rich setting. It’s Hallowe’en and ‘Up on their brooms the Witches stream/Crooked and black in the crescent’s gleam’. Sure enough, a line of witches race across the night sky on their broomsticks, while down below a party of jolly trick or treaters set out on their own night’s adventure. The two groups mirror one another, and the lines of the poem work equally for both. The night sky is portrayed in wonderful blues and purples, the centre spread in which the witches surge pell-mell down the Milky Way is particularly beautiful. De la Mare guides his witches through the constellations in his poem, and Rabei illustrates them all, the end papers providing readers with a very special chart of the night sky. ~ Andrea Reece
The world-famous rhymes starring cats such as Macavity the Mystery Cat and Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat are beautifully presented in this edition with illustrations by Axel Scheffler best-known for his pictures of the Gruffalo. Perfect for reading out loud, the poems about the practical cats are both humorous and affectionate, catching the quirky and familiar foibles of all cats. ~ Julia Eccleshare
A wonderful collection of poems from the much-loved creator of The Gruffalo, all of them perfect for reading aloud. There are funny poems (lots of those as you’d expect) and nonsense rhymes as well as story poems and quieter poems to get you thinking too. Nick Sharratt has great fun with the illustrations and Vera Victoria Vines, dressed up to the nines, is a particular treat, as is the crazy, mayonnaisy mum serving up ice cream with baked beans, and golden syrup with sardines! Julia Donaldson’s delight in poetry and the sound of words comes through on every page and is utterly contagious. ~ Andrea Reece
A joyful collection of poems for young children by an author who is completely in tune with her audience! Julia Donaldson celebrates the delights of going to the park, walking the dog, pizza, riding a bike and sliding down the bannisters in poems that are just perfect for reading out loud. Nick Sharratt’s illustrations have never looked brighter or more appealing and make the poems zing off the page. Definitely one to add to the picture book shelf and to return to over and over. ~ Andrea Reece
This stunning new edition of Edward’s Lear’s classic story poem makes a handsome pair to Julia Donaldson’ The Further Adventures of The Owl and the Pussy-cat which is also illustrated by Charlotte Voake. Every familiar of Lear’s tender and comical rhyme is perfectly picked up in the illustrations: the pea-green boat; the honey and money; the Piggy-wig with the ring at the end of his nose. A glorious final spread shows the happy pair dancing contentedly by the light of the moon! Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Further Adventures of The Owl and the Pussy-cat provides an additional introduction. ~ Julia Eccleshare
NEW INDIE AND SELF PUBLISHED BOOK REVIEW AND PROMOTION SERVICE LAUNCHED!