Poems to Perform Award-winning author by Julia Donaldson (author)

Bring poetry alive in your classroom with this classic collection of performance verse chosen by Julia Donaldson, the nation’s best-loved picture book author and current Children’s Laureate.

Julia’s passionate belief that performance can enhance a child’s literacy and confidence is informed by her own experience of working with children to bring stories, poems and songs to life. Specially chosen to be performed by children in two or more voices, these poems range from classics by Edward Lear, W.H. Auden and Eleanor Farjeon to contemporary favourites by Michael Rosen, John Agard and Clare Bevan. Julia’s own notes at the end of the book share her thoughts and ideas on how to perform the various pieces. Illustrated throughout with exquisite lino-cut artwork, this is a must for every primary classroom and for any lover of great poetry!

Product Details

Format

Paperback

ISBN

9780230757431

Lexile measure

Other details

160 pages

Condition

New

Author/Illustrator

Julia Donaldson

Julia Donaldson is author of many of today’s best-loved picture books including The Gruffalo and Stick Man. Best known for her collaborations with Axel Scheffler, each of these vivid rhyming stories is a triumph of imagination. She was also the Children’s Laureate 2011-2013.

More about Julia: “I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him).

Mary and I were always creating imaginary characters and mimicking real ones, and I used to write shows and choreograph ballets for us.

I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta.

The busking led to a career in singing and songwriting, mainly for children’s television.

One of my television songs, A Squash and a Squeeze, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published.

My real breakthrough was The Gruffalo, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately – he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow – but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes.

My novel The Giants and the Joneses is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic Princess Mirror-Belle who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old.

When I’m not writing I am often performing, at book festivals and in theatres. I really enjoy getting the children in the audience to help me act out the stories and sing the songs.”