Author, Kate Wakeling

Illustrator and Cover designer,Eilidh Muldoon

Having written successful poetry collections for slightly older readers (age 7/8+), Kate was keen to focus on younger children for this collection. She loved the challenge of writing really juicy, imaginative and original poems that have just as much craft as her work for older children, but which are accessible to this younger age group. Her poems explore a real mix of themes so that the whole book has a feeling of technicolour miscellany in both topic and mood – so there are lots of playful poems about everyday things, but also poems that feel more reflective, emotional or informative.

Alongside poetry, Kate works as a musicologist, and was keen for the book to explore the connections between poetry and music – savouring the sound of words with particular care and attention, so that the poems feel really joyful to read aloud.

Kate has young sons and really enjoyed focusing on the sorts of things that seem to preoccupy them and their friends: everything from splinters and stick collections, to how the world must seem to an ant (‘If I Was an Ant’) to a person’s unerring capacity to eat dessert even when full of savoury food (‘The Pudding Place’) and the problem of monsters appearing in a bedroom’s shadows at night (‘Me and the Dark and the Wardrobe Door’). 

The aim was also to make the book practically useful for teachers in classrooms – with the inclusion of lots of different forms, moods and writing frames (for example, ‘My New Pet’, which invites children to create their own mixed-up animal in response), as well as covering popular EYFS/KS1 topics like mini-beasts, and the Great Fire of London.

"...Such skill in the use of language, lyricism and musicality in her work, with topics and themes to engage the interest of its audience.” CLPE