About the Children's Poetry Bookshelf

The Children's Poetry Bookshelf is a book club for young readers aged 7 - 11 dedicated entirely to poetry.

The Children's Poetry Bookshelf has recently been relaunched with a fanfare of new features. More books, activity sheets and a brilliant new website have been added to make each term's books more exciting. Whether your children like funny poems, spooky poems or puzzling poems, we guarantee there will be something for everyone.

The choices
We are especially pleased to be working with some of the most imaginative and enthusiastic poets and publishers around. Each term our team of Selectors chooses the books that they think are the best being published at the time, the 'Choices', as well as a selection of recommended books from the backlist.

Our selectors
Our Selectors are Mandy Coe, award-winning poet and educational expert, Wes Magee, children's poet and teacher, and Fiona Waters, celebrated children's books editor and poetry enthusiast. Together they bring a huge amount of learning and experience to their selections. Mandy Coe is also writing the Children's Poetry Bookshelf's teachers' activity sheets: downloadable from this website and sent to members, these are the best guides available to reading poetry, either as a young reader or with a young reader, uncovering the intricacies and showing the fun that can be had with language.

Sharing children's poetry
For teachers and librarians this selection panel and support represents new input and
advice in a well-loved and occasionally daunting field. Through the Children's Poetry Bookshelf
we can share our enthusiasm for children's poetry with you. It is our belief that, as one of
the first points of contact that children can have with both creativity and language, poetry
is uniquely exciting, enriching and accessible.

How to join