Alex Wharton Books

Red Sky at Night, Poet’s Delight is the third poetry collection from Alex Wharton, who is Children’s Laureate Wales. Within the collection are many poems covering a range of themes from sports, weather and objects to animals and oak trees. There is a poem for everyone within this book.

The poems in the book showcase a good selection of what poetry looks and sounds like in different forms. They range widely in length (there are examples of one-verse and multiple-verse poems) and theme. There are some laugh-out-loud poems as well as poems that encourage any reader to celebrate their individuality and uniqueness. There are poems within this collection that could internalised and performed out loud and others that could be used to encourage a reader to create their poem in a similar style. Furthermore, the presentation is playfully brought alive by the illustrations for Ian Morris.

There is one poem – ‘Young Oak’ – which tells the poetic story of an oak tree near Wharton’s home, and of the nature and events it witnesses through the years and seasons. This is quite unlike any poem I have read before, both in terms of content and length, and would be a lovely choice for a discussion or poetry study in any Key Stage Two classroom.

Overall this was an enjoyable collection of poems that will no doubt inspire any reader to create their own.