Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Format: Poetry

Yapping Away

Poetry

Joshua Seigal, winner of the 2020 Laugh Out Loud Book Awards, brings his raucous humour, creativity and wit to another brilliant collection of poems. Ideal for fans of Michael Rosen, this book will delight all young readers and fans of funny books.

From hilarious to heartfelt poems – and everything in between – this collection offers something for everyone. Discover the eight steps for having a successful tantrum, and why you should NEVER attend a Teddy Bear’s Picnic (you have been warned). Packed full of fun illustrations by Sarah Horne, and covering a range of imaginative topics, Yapping Away is the perfect follow-up to Joshua Seigal’s prize-winning collection I Bet I Can Make You Laugh.

Ideal for children as young as 3 to read with adults, or for children aged 5-7 to read by themselves.

Jelly Boots Smelly Boots

David Tazzyman & Michael Rosen

Poetry

A riotous celebration of words – silly words, funny words, words you only use in your own family, new words, old words, and the very best words in the right order.

Melon

Melon squashy, melon sloshy. My friend Helen’s eating melon. So far, so good with Helen and her melon. But here’s what I’m tellin’ Helen: ‘Don’t SIT on your melon, Helen!’

Filled with colour illustrations and packed with silly rhymes, witty wordplay and thought-provoking story poems, this collection will delight children of all ages. Michael Rosen is the bestselling author of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, along with many other picture books and collections of poetry.

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

Britta Teckentrup & Fiona Waters

Poetry

We were over the moon to receive this beautiful hardback poetry anthology. Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright contains an animal poem for every day of the year. It’s a real stunner of a book – a gorgeously bound hardback compendium with full-page colour illustrations by Britta Teckentrup.

Readers can have fun dipping in and out of the pages and reading animal poems both familiar and new to us – flicking through to the entries for today, tomorrow, our birthdays, family and friends’ birthday and other special dates in the calendar, as well as pausing on random pages that catch our attention due ot the illustrations or the titles of the poems.

It’s the kind of collection that is perfect for a teacher’s desk or family coffee table to open when there’s a spare few minutes in the day. This is a book to treasure and one that sings of the joy of poetry as much as the wonders of the natural world.

Poems Aloud

Daniel Gray-Barnett & Joseph Coelho

Poetry

Poems are made to read OUT LOUD!

A wittily illustrated anthology of poems, designed to be read aloud. Twenty poems by the award-winning Joseph Coelho arm children with techniques for lifting poetry off the page and performing with confidence.

Perfect for confident children and shy readers alike, this book teaches all sorts of clever ways to performing poetry. Children will learn 20 techniques for reading aloud by trying out 20 funny and thoughtful original poems by the much-loved and award-winning performance poet, Joseph Coelho .

There are tongue twisters, poems to project, poems to whisper, poems to make you laugh. There are poems to perform to a whole class and others to whisper in somebody’s ear. Richly textured, warm and stylish illustration by Daniel Gray-Barnett bring each page to life.

An Emotional Menagerie

The School of Life

Poetry

This is a beautiful collection of poems, all themed around different emotional states. Working through the alphabet (Anger, Boredom, Curiosity and so on), each feeling is likened to an animal and starts with the line ‘If ….were an animal’, helping children to identify the words we use to describe emotional states and how the feelings might cause people to behave or react.

The bright illustrations help children to make the link between the emotions and their paired animal. Anger is compared to a lion, boredom is a limp jellyfish, obsession to an otter and zeal to busy, working ants. Children will have loads of fun creating their own comparisons. A comprehensive resource pack is also available to download from the publisher.

A lovely book to help develop emotional literacy, we recommend this as a great addition to book collections in schools and homes.

Chocolate Cake

Kevin Waldron & Michael Rosen

Picturebook, Poetry

When I was a boy,
I had a favourite treat.
It was when my mum made . . .

CHOCOLATE CAKE!

Ohhh! I LOVED chocolate cake.

Fantastically funny and full of silly noises, this is Michael Rosen’s love letter to every child’s favourite treat, chocolate cake. Brought to life as a picture book for the first time with brilliant and characterful illustrations by Kevin Waldron.

Caterpillar Cake

Krina Patel-Sage & Matt Goodfellow

Poetry

“Caterpillar caterpillar caterpillar cake – it’s the only thing that my mum can make!”

Would you like to eat a caterpillar cake? Join a rocket race into space? See crazy crocodiles at the zany zoo or play with a furry, purry cat? Wherever these 16 fun-filled poems lead you, they will brighten your day.

Splashing at the seaside, storytime at school, playing in the bath or riding home on Daddy’s shoulders – this brilliant, read-aloud collection for young children has lots to join in with and lots to explore in the brightly coloured illustrations.

Honey For Me, Honey For You

Chris Riddell & Michael Rosen

Poetry

From Children’s Laureates Michael Rosen and Chris Riddell, the bestselling team behind A Great Big Cuddle , comes a first book of nursery rhymes.

Flying pigs, wobbling plates of jelly and a giant who trembles whenever he meets a mouse: welcome to the topsy-turvy world of nursery rhymes. Inspired by his lifelong fascination with these peculiar poems, Michael Rosen has placed familiar playground songs alongside forgotten gems for a seminal new collection.

Brought to vivid life by Chris Riddell’s magnificent pictures, expect familiar faces, from little Jumping Joan to Miss Mary Mack – but also plenty of surprises… With forty rhymes to choose from, this book is sure to prove a bedtime favourite.

The Magic of Mums

Justin Coe & Steve Wells

Poetry

A highly recommendable poetry collection in which every poem represents a different mum. There’s Bake-Off Mum, School-Run Mum, Keep- Fit Mum, Stunt Mother and Under-Cover Spy Mother – but the collection also celebrates mums who are often underrepresented in books too, seen in the poems Adoptive Mum, Dad-Mum, Windrush Mum, Young Mum and Two Mums. You’ll recognise plenty of the mums in this witty, wise and heart-warming collection, which is perfect for children in KS2.

The Night Before Easter

Natasha Wing

Poetry

A lighthearted spin on the classic poem ‘The Night Before Christmas’, this is a fun rhyming text that tells the story of a nighttime visit from the Easter Bunny. Younger children will enjoy the story and illustrations while slightly older children could perform the poem by heart or take on the challenge of writing their own versions.

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