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The Crossing by Manjeet Mann

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 5 Jan 2o22
Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week 30 Jan 2022
Costa Book Awards Category Winner
Shortlisted for 2022 CLiPPA Award

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“Powerful, compassionate and ultimately hopeful.” Guardian

A novel about two teenagers from opposite worlds, The Crossing is a profound story of hope, grief, and the very real tragedies of the refugee crisis.

Natalie’s world is falling apart. She’s just lost her mum and her brother marches the streets of Dover full of hate and anger. Swimming is her only refuge. Sammy has fled his home and family in Eritrea for the chance of a new life in Europe. Every step he takes on his journey is a step into an unknown and unwelcoming future. A twist of fate brings them together and gives them both hope. But is hope enough to mend a broken world?

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Carnival of the Animals by Michael Morpurgo

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Collaborating once more with iconic artist, Michael Foreman, Morpurgo’s poems are inspired by The Carnival of the Animals – a humorous musical by the French composer Camille Saint-Saens. Building on this classic framework, Michael has added many more animals – they speak in their own voices, full of humour and brio, to tell of their lives and the impact of humanity on their habitats.

With full colour illustrations throughout, this celebrated partnership has created a gift book with a strong ecological message that will also ignite a love of poetry in young readers and will appeal to fans of The Lost Words. Above all it is a celebration of the natural world in verse, a book to treasure and to inspire.

Michael Morpurgo has sold over 35 million books globally, many of them illustrated by Michael Foreman.

The Best Ever Book of Funny Poems chosen by Brian Moses

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 18 Mar 2021

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A new anthology of humorous children’s poems from Macmillan, curated by Brian Moses, who has been a Macmillan children’s poet for many years. Check out Lost Magic: The Very Best of Brian Moses, a collection which includes performance stalwarts such as ‘Walking with My Iguana‘ ‘The Lost Angels’, ‘Aliens Stole My Underpants’, ‘Behind the Staffroom Door’, ‘Lost Magic’, ‘The Sssnake Hotel’, ‘A Feather from an Angel’, and ‘Cakes in the Staffroom’:

Perfect d for reading aloud. Explore poems about pets, peculiar creatures, school, family, fantasy, dinosaurs, dragons, space, and just plain NONSENSE.

The anthology includes work by Brian Bilston, Sue Hardy-Dawson, Pie Corbett*, Paul Cookson, Liz Brownlee, Mike Jubb, James Carter and Rachel Rooney.

*Corbett’s Wikipedia entry is in need of amendment/updating

National Poetry Day Is Today, October 2nd

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NationalPoetryDay

 

National Poetry Day is the nation’s biggest celebration of poetry.

This year’s theme is Remember, so if you remember a poem, however short, pass it on with hashtag #thinkofapoem

Poetry is the one art form you can keep in your head, and this year Cambridge University is launching a massive Poetry and Memory survey on National Poetry Day to discover what poems the nation remembers.

Click the link below for live events, happenings, classroom activities and spontaneous uncontrollable outbursts of poetry –  or set up your own and tell us about it here.

Teachers and students can use free activity/lesson plans and posters and share the fun via Twitter #nationalpoetryday

Here’s a set of eight new poems for primary school children by five leading contemporary children’s poets.

To keep in touch by Liz Brownlee
Remembering by Liz Brownlee
The Family Book by Brian Moses
Poets are Photographers by Paul Cookson
Remembering is our duty by Paul Cookson
Dear Mug by Roger Stevens
In an old dog’s memory by Brian Moses
Whole body memory by Jan Dean

http://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/national-poetry-day/what-is-national-poetry-day/

Margaret Wise Brown’s unearthed lullaby poems to be published

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A previously unpublished collection of lullaby poems by the much-loved author has been discovered in an old trunk, and is set for release in March.

 

Brown, who died in 1952, is the author of more than a hundred children’s books, but is best remembered for Goodnight Moon (“In the great green room/ there was a telephone/ And a red balloon”), and The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd. Sterling Books in the US is now preparing to release Goodnight Songs, a collection of 12 children’s lullabies by Brown, which were found in a trunk in her sister’s barn, and have now been illustrated by 12 different artists.

“Baby sail the seven seas/ Safely in my arms/ When the waves go up and down/ You are safe from harm,” writes Brown in one of the songs. And: “When I close my eyes at night/ In the darkness I see light/ Blue clouds in a big white sky.”

Kirkus Reviews called the forthcoming book a “treasure trove“, revealing that it was written in the last year of Brown’s life, “when she was travelling in France for a book tour and under contract to create songs for a new children’s record company”.

Goodnight Songs will be published by Sterling Children’s Books in March.

via Margaret Wise Brown’s unearthed lullaby poems to be published | Books | theguardian.com.