Macmillan Children's Books A Poem for Every Night of the Year

A Poem for Every Night of the Year is an attractive book with a mostly superb range of poems, some well-known, some not. The type face is clear - sharp black print - and in a larger font size than usual. This makes it easier to read than some poetry books with their 'artistic' small pale grey printwhich you'd need a magnifying glass to read. Allie Esiri clearly loves poetry: all shapes, all subjects and all forms. This is a children's book but because of its eclectic selection, will be enjoyed by many adults. My only criticism (and it's a serious one) is that the 'introductions' which have been written for each poem, placed immediately after the title, often derail or upstage the poem. Some, such as that for Against Idleness and Mischief, page 114, This is just to say, page 204, The Eagle, page 216, and The Listeners, page 292, are just crass, whereas a few others are genuinely helpful: Einstein's Brain, page 243, A Poison Tree, page 299, and Tichborne's Elegy, page 360. The excuse for this intrusion into the world of the poem must be to make the poems easier to understand by younger readers. For me, such explanatory notes would have worked better at the end of each poem. Children deserve better. The beautiful cover illustration is by Zanna Goldhawk.

Too many nonsense poems. It gets stuck and you get the same author or type of poem for days which is rubbish if they done enjoy it. Mixing it up more would have been good. Often too American. For example since when has the Star spangled banner been a poem?Not as good as I had hoped.

I saw this book in Waterstones and instantly fell in love with it. Cheaper and delivered to the door made my choice of purchase obvious.This book comes before the partner book "A Poem for every day of the Year". The book is, in the main, child friendly (maybe 7+) , but prepare for lots of conversations for some of them and they're probably more read to children rather than read by them. Lovely range of silliness to quite serious topics from a broad spectrum of poets meaning you can expose yourself and your children to appropriate poetry choices that you may never have read before. The book is a lovely reminder of the importance of poetry and challenging language experienced by children growing up.Having a poem a day means that you can always get some guidance for what to read.There are very well and simply written introductory paragraphs for each daily entry that help provide context for the choice.Open a page and you get a wash of contentedness having read the choice for the evening. A great pre-bed read to delve into and explore whatever the date.

What sets this book aside from other poetry collections is the range, selection and ordering of the poems. Long ones are followed by shorter ones, there's a great diversity of genres, but nothing so esoteric as to switch off my 10 year old daughter. This book has created a wonderful habit for us where my wife or I read the day's poem with her everyday and then talk about it. A great fringe benefit has been that it's got me interested in poetry again.

This collection is going down brilliantly with our 10yo and 11yo girls. Super range of eras and voices. The contrast between length each day took a bit of negotiating, but they now understand that poetry has no fixed length. It's as long as it needs to be. That's a lesson in itself.