Girl Power – Poetry Roundabout

Happy International Women’s Day!

Jan Dean’s latests books are The Penguin in Lost Property, illustrated by Nathan Reed (written with Roger Stevens) and Reaching the Stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls, illustrated by Steph Says Hello, and written with Liz Brownlee and Michaela Morgan.

This is one of her wonderful poems from Reaching the Stars.

Advice to Rapunzel

Sort yourself out.

Don’t hang around

for someone else to rescue you.

Give yourself a trim.

Pick up the scissors,

it’s not rocket science.

Make a rope ladder.

Twist one. Plait one. Improvise.

Use your head for more than growing hair.

Escape.

Secure the ladder

Shimmy down and leg it.

Don’t look back.

Get clean away

Vamoose. Stay loose.

And learn your lesson.

Staying put beneath a tyrant’s thumb

is dumb.

Reaching the stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls, can be bought here.

There are few poetry awards for children’s poetry – but the Carnegie has some nominations this year, which is fabulous; Joe Coelho for Overheard in a Tower Block, illustrated by Kate Milner (Otter-Barry Books), Michael Rosen for What is Poetry, illustrated by Jill Calder (Walker Books), and Kate Wakeling for Moon Juice, illustrated by Elīna Braslina (The Emma Press).

The main one is the CLPE, or the CLiPPA (The Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award), which is the only National award in the UK for published children’s poetry.

Winning a poetry award as you can imagine is something that happens very rarely and when it does, as you can imagine, children’s poets jump for joy.

So when Reaching the Stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls, by Liz Brownlee, Jan Dean and Michaela Morgan, cover illustrated by Steph Says Hello (Macmillan), won the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Awards for poetry this year, one of the people dancing was me.

North Somerset teachers love it, and are using it a lot, which means that teachers everywhere probably do – and that means a lot to us, as teachers really know what pupils like and want and need. We are thrilled. *Jumps for joy*

Tag: Girl Power

A Poem from Jan Dean on International Women’s Day

North Somerset Teachers’ Book Award Poetry Winner