Best kids’ poetry books 2021: Anthologies that inspire and educate

If you can do one favour for your child, expose them to and encourage a love of poetry.

The benefits of poetry can’t be underestimated for kids. It can help with language development, encourages children to play and experiment with words and, when read aloud, it’s fantastic for understanding pitch, rhythm and inflection.

But perhaps most important to all, poetry can help children see the world in a different way, listen to a diverse range of voices tackling a diverse range of subjects, and feel inspired and capable.

With a 2020 survey showing that around one in five children aged nine to 18 regularly read poetry outside of school, the desire is definitely there, so we’ve rounded up the best children’s poetry books to nurture that love of prose.

How we tested

To make our selection we enlisted the help of our testers, spanning from two years old to mid-teens, to give their honest feedback on which books deserved their place, taking into consideration how accessible the language was, the themes each book covered, originality and how engaged they were.

As well as this, we considered the poets included in each anthology – in particular, we were looking for an inclusive range of voices, and plenty of contemporary poets – as well as the quality, including the cover artwork and any illustrations, and, above all, how often our young testers reached for the book.

Read more:

The best kids’ poetry books for 2021 are: