Our children’s anthology features poetry and stories for young readers. The poems and stories within this collection are fun and exciting, meaningful and inspiring. Adventure awaits within these pages.
Charlotte Oliver is an Ilkley Literature Festival New Northern Poet 2023 and was recently Lead Artist for the Yorkshire Coast on Spoken Word Power 2024. Published widely in journals and anthologies including Candlestick Press’ Christmas Walks, she has placed in a number of competitions including Wirral Poetry Prize, the Patricia Eschen Poetry Prize 2022 and Wetherby Festival Poetry Competition.
Amy Fox loves writing, nature and the outdoors. She is especially passionate about connecting people with the nature on their doorsteps and enjoys appreciating small, often overlooked details while finding fresh ways to observe and celebrate them.
Philip Waddell was born in the former British Guiana but has now lived for long enough in his Oxfordshire village to properly qualify as a villager. Since the 90s his poems for children and young people have appeared in anthologies by Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Scholastic, Nosy Crow and many others.
Nick Fordham is a children’s doctor but dreams of his other life away from the hospital reading and writing poems and stories. He annoys his own children with poems, and has work published in The Dirigible Balloon and Ars Medica.
Anna Llewellyn is a Welsh writer, illustrator, and literary editor living in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Toy Press, Cleaver Magazine, and Bartleby Snopes, and her plays for children have been produced across New York state.
Sarah Ziman is a poet from Wales who likes cats, crisps, cake, reading and rhyme. She dislikes writing bios. She won the YorkMix Poems for Children Prize 2021, and enjoys annoying her own children by forcing them on nature walks or ‘dragging them into antique shops’. ‘Why did my Brain make me say it?’, her debut collection for children, is coming very soon.
Vicky Gatehouse is a zoologist, poet, volunteer tree-planter and children’s writer based in West Yorkshire. Her children’s poems have featured in Tyger Tyger, Dirigible Balloon, The Toy and Pan Macmillan anthologies. Vicky also writes picture books and was recently shortlisted for the Searchlight Awards and runner up for the Write Mentor Picture Book Prize.
Laura Theis’ work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, The Caterpillar, Magma, Rattle, Tyger Tyger, Aesthetica, iamb, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut how to extricate yourself (2020), an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things (2023) received the Live […]
Barbara Bleiman is an ex-English teacher and education consultant at the English and Media Centre (EMC), with a keen interest in poetry. She has written numerous articles and blogs and a book about English teaching, What Matters in English Teaching.
Today, I had to sit on the think chair. Because I ate Maggie’s lunch.
‘It was not yours to eat,’ the teacher said.
‘But I was hungry,’ I said, but not out loud.
I had to sit on the think chair and think.
Claire Schlinkert is a British children’s writer, currently living with her family in Belgium. She loves writing poems and playing with words, and she has published her writing in anthologies and magazines, including Tyger Tyger, The Toy and Little Thoughts Press.
The horse pulled up with a snort in front of the next dwelling on their list. The wizard, dozing in the cart behind, tugged the floppy hat from her eyes and did a double blink. An unusual place to live. But this was the Enchanted Forest, where building permission was granted retrospectively by council workers wary of the threat of curse and counter curse.
Arlette Manasseh likes films, novels, poetry and chocolate. Some of her favourite reads are middle grade verse novels. These poems are taken from a verse novel she is writing about a thirteen year old girl called Breeze who lives in a small coastal town, where bullying has become a big problem.
Kelly Burden is a primary school Teaching Assistant, living in West Sussex with her husband and young daughter. She recently graduated with distinction from The University of Winchester’s MA in Writing for Children and is currently working on her first middle-grade novel.
Sinéad Callanan is a teacher and poet from Limerick, Ireland. She is currently completing a Masters in Children’s Literature and Media. Her work has appeared in PaperBound Magazine, Little Thoughts Press and Paper Lanterns. Even more of her work has gone into making her friends, family and young pupils laugh.
Mark Bird is a children’s poet and teacher. He was born in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire and now lives in London. Mark’s debut picture book, ‘Halloween Date From Hell’ came out in October 2022. Mark has featured in The Caterpillar, Gill Education’s ‘Over The Moon’ series, Brian Moses’ ‘The Best Ever Book of Funny Poems’ anthology and many magazines.
Linda lives in a leafy corner of England and is passionate about inspiring others with her poetry for children. Her work has been published widely online and in journals and anthologies.
You are on a quest to save the forest. Exhausted you sleep for the first time in three days, and awake to find that you are in a dark woodland glade …
I pressed myself into the soft shadows as the dark figure hovered a few feet away. Pencil thin, dressed in a frock-coat and top hat, he seemed to be looking for someone. He may have breathed my name just then, but it was faint, a mere murmur.
Jane Thorp has had many poems published in magazines. She won the Yeovil Literary Prize for Poetry in 2023. She was shortlisted in The Plough Poetry Prize 2013, children’s category, and has been commended and shortlisted in other poetry prizes.
Debi Knight is a Neuro-diverse poet and short story writer based in West Yorkshire who considers herself a lifelong student. She writes the life she sees and feels around her – exploring connections between humans, nature and the effects of modern life on all.
Sarah Ziman is a poet from Wales who likes cats, crisps, cake, reading and rhyme. She dislikes writing bios. She won the YorkMix Poems for Children Prize 2021, and has poems in The Caterpillar, The School Magazine, The Toy, PaperBound, Paper Lanterns, Tyger Tyger, Little Thoughts Press, The Dirigible Balloon, Cricket, and anthologies by Macmillan and Pomelo Books.
Leigh Manley is a new poet from Wales. He likes watching rugby, drinking cups of tea, acting silly, and making up fun words and sentences! He is currently part of Literature Wales’ ‘Representing Wales’ writers’ development programme for 2023/24 and he’s had work published with The Dirigible Balloon. He is working on his first poetry collection for curious children and the young at heart.
Eibhlís Carcione is a bilingual poet and children’s author from Cork, Ireland. Her three poetry collections in Irish, Tonn Chlíodhna (2015), Eala Oíche (2019), and Bean Róin (2023), are published by Coiscéim. She has won numerous awards for her poetry.
As I push open the high wooden gate, blue paint peels off into me palm. I let the flecks fall to the ground and go into the back yard. Mrs Walker’s old tabby prowls along the wall overlooking the alley. She flops down and gives me a filthy look before closing her yellow eyes for a nap.
Carole Bromley lives in York. Winner of 2022 Caterpillar Prize, she also has poems in Tyger, Tyger, Paper Lanterns, The Toy, Little Thoughts Press, Paperbound, The Dirigible Balloon, in anthologies from MacMillan, Emma Press and Nosy Crow as well as in her Smith/Doorstop collection for children, Blast Off!
On Fridays, some of us get tiny cubes of yellow cake. A behaviour thing, a reward if you like. Today I don’t get one. Tam offers to split hers, but the scared six-year-old in me still thinks I might live to regret that sort of kindness. I eat my dry crackers in silence.
Charlie Bown is a children’s poet and author. She has two children’s anthologies published through Magic Daisy Publishing and two of her poems appear in the Chasing Clouds anthology from The Dirigible Balloon. Her debut children’s chapter book is due to be published by Ventorros Press in 2023.
Holly Gordon Clark is a seventeen year old poet and works as a librarian and bookshop worker. Her work and writings have been published in Fireside Fiction, Cat Among the Pigeons and have been prized by St John’s Oxford.
Dear Reader,
Whoever you are, congratulations! You have successfully intercepted my royal letter. And that is quite a feat.
Eleanor loved writing poetry as a child and now enjoys writing poems for others to enjoy. She is a doctor by day, working to help children with developmental difficulties. Eleanor has had poems published by The Dirigible Balloon and Tyger Tyger Magazine.
A feast of a breakfast lay before my eyes. Scrambled eggs; not too rubbery but not too wet, streaky bacon, pancakes covered in sticky maple syrup, warm croissants, cereal, fruit, yoghurt. You name it; it’s there.
It’s Samhain. An important time of celebrations for the village, marking the harvest’s end and arrival of darker months. The village buzzed with bonfire and feast preparations. Everyone was excited. Everyone except Gwenni.
Catherine Olver is a writer and researcher with a PhD in children’s literature from the University of Cambridge. She has special interests in LGBTQ+ poetry and in how literature can help humans participate in their environments (whether urban or rural) with sensitivity and joy.
Jacqueline is a primary school teacher and an emerging writer from the Isle of Man. She has had poems published in The Caterpillar, Tyger Tyger and The Dirigible Balloon.
Tom pulled out a screwdriver, weathered from a lifetime of use, and waved it in my face. With one foot on the dustbin and one flat against the wall he hauled himself onto the windowsill and slipped the screwdriver into a small notch in the frame.
It wasn’t fair, he hadn’t done anything! Joe stomped up the stairs to his bedroom. Sent to his room “without dinner or devices” as his mum had said. Which was a laugh as he didn’t have any ‘devices’ and a stale cheese barm barely counted as dinner.
Kate Williams is a children’s poet, with numerous contributions to anthologies by UK publishers such as Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury and Hodder.
I discovered I could travel back in time at about the same time that I realised I was into girls. Finding myself back at the start of the gym class I’d just struggled through proved the former; my all-consuming crush on my best friend.
Rhiannon Oliver is an actress and poet from Cardiff. As an actress, she has worked with companies such as BBC, Sky 1, The National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, National Theatre of Wales and Manchester Royal Exchange, as well as off Broadway and on UK and International tours.
Bram hissed as they checked the last of the traps. Empty.
Dory knew better than to correct his little brother’s anger. They would need some of that fire to warm them in the coming winter and Dory had none to spare. What Dory felt most was tired.
‘Oi, death girl!’ a familiar voice shouted.
My heart was in my throat. What were they doing here? A couple of lads from my year at school rounded the corner beside the church and up the pathway near where I was kneeling.
The boy arrived at Elenya’s lighthouse a day before her first Rites, sailing through the haar as if drifting over clouds. She watched his approach eagerly from the lantern room.
Attie Lime likes walking in fields, playing UNO and making up words. She is currently working on an MG novel about brothers, magic, and a cat called Colin.
‘Look at this.’
Maggie moved to see what Kai was pointing at, he was enjoying his new cool status with his big sister’s old iPhone. He was looking at the Magpies and Mochas account, the social media monster that Maggie’s mother had created.
‘Huh!’ said Kelvin Kea, squinting up at the sign by the hotel entrance. He treated the man bashing it in the ground to his best parrot-y stare. ‘We’re New Zealand’s only mountain parrot, if you please!’
When my brother Simon went to university he left me his old fishing rod, a dog-eared copy of Wind in the Willows, and seven pounds fifty in change. At least he left them in his unlocked bedroom, which was pretty much the same thing.