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if

If you can keep your head when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

but make allowances for their doubting too.....

The start of one of my favourite poems, by Rudyard Kipling. And I can even forgive him for referring to men only! Well, just about...

Have found a brilliant poetry website for children, called Man in the Moon. It has loads of good stuff, games, exciting websites, interviews and silly jokes. Look out for the cat, pacing up and down like Einstein waiting for an idea or inspiration.

And if you click through, you will find an excellent description of, and ways to use, similes and metaphors.

The rhyming pattern and way poems are written, help to make them easily remembered. From the start of language development, children recite the pattern, later they remember nursery rhymes and games.

In Shakespeare, we find the use of the iambic pentameter, the most common metrical form in English poetry, as in the first line of Richard the Third,' Now is the winter of our discontent'. All to do with the number of syllables, stressed and unstressed. Rhythm being measured in small groups of syllables, called feet. 'Iambic' describes the type of foot and 'pentameter' means a line has five feet.

Maybe there is a poem that you keep in your head, like a story you keep in a book.

You can visit the home page of Dolphin Booksellers. Bringing information about the best in children's books direct to you. Working with authors and illustrators in schools and book events,


Dolphinbooksellers.co.uk is part of SmithMartin LLP

A retail resource for the best children's books, entry point into our children's and community library procurement and supply service. Offering a miscellany of news and featured authors for all our readers, whatever their age.


wikiWikiReadia is a searchable, editable good practice guide to reading. It's a great resource and has loads of information about projects that are happening around the country to promote reading. Its part of the Reading for Life programme. Its beauty is in its collaborative nature and its purpose is to provide a place where good practice in reading is recognised and shared, in effect, an online encyclopedia.

Anyone who is interested in reading can take part. The programme which runs the wiki, called a MediaWiki is carefully designed so that any mistakes can be easily be altered.

gardeThere's a great section on Reading Gardens, which are great for your health and well being. What joy to sit in the outside and just read!

'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.' Marcus Tullius Cicero.

You can visit our home page of Dolphin Booksellers. Bringing information about the best in children's books direct to you. Working with authors and illustrators in schools and book events.


Dolphinbooksellers.co.uk is part of SmithMartin LLP

A retail resource for the best children's books, entry point into our children's and community library procurement and supply service. Offering a miscellany of news and featured authors for all our readers, whatever their age.