Moon Juice: Poems for Children

By Kate Wakeling and Elīna Brasliņa

Meet Skig, who's meant to be a warrior (but is really more of a worrier). Meet a giddy comet, skidding across the sky with her tail on fire. Put a marvellous new machine in your pocket and maybe you'll be able to fix all your life's problems.
Kate Wakeling's first book of poems for children is full of curious characters and strange situations. The poems she writes are always musical, sometimes magical, and full of wonder at the weirdness of the world.
Moon Juice contains 25 poems and features bonus materials, including interviews with the author and the illustrator, and ideas for writing your own poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781910139578

Kate Wakeling

Kate Wakeling is a poet and musicologist. Her debut poetry collection for children, Moon Juice, won the CLiPPA in 2017 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Her second collection, Cloud Soup, was shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2022 and named a book of the month in the Guardian and the Scotsman. A pamphlet of Kate’s poetry for adults, The Rainbow Faults, is published by The Rialto. Kate studied music at Cambridge University and holds a PhD in Balinese gamelan music from SOAS.

Book preview

Dedication

For Dad

Copyright

First published in ebook format in Great Britain in 2017 by the Emma Press Ltd

First published in print in Great Britain in 2016 by the Emma Press Ltd

Poems copyright © Kate Wakeling 2016

Illustrations copyright © Elīna Brasliņa 2016

All rights reserved.

The right of Kate Wakeling and Elīna Brasliņa to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

eISBN 978-1-910139-57-8

ISBN 978-1-910139-49-3

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

Dedication

Copyright

* * *

1. New Moon

2. Skig the Warrior

3. Bad Moods

4. Comet

5. Instruments of Use

6. My Ghost Sister

7. Hair Piece

8. Jungle Cat

9. Rich Pickings

10. THE INSTRUCTIONS

11. Hamster Man

12. Night Journey

13. Thief

14. Little-Known Facts

15. I Found a Dinosaur Under the Shed

16. Machine

17. The Serpent and the Turtle (or: A Very Balinese Beginning)

18. The Spy Café

19. Telescope

20. The Demon Mouth

21. Dodo

22. Spirit Bridge

24. Shadow Boy

24. Rita the Pirate

25. The Ten Dark Toes at the Bottom of the Bed

26. This be the scale

* * *

Moon Juice Bonus Bits

About the poet

About the illustrator

Interview with Kate

Interview with Elīna

Write your own poem!

About the Emma Press

Also from the Emma Press

The Noisy Classroom

Watcher of the Skies

Falling Out of the Sky

New Moon

Moon is

silver sliver.

Moon is

clipped cup

from which to sip

a first drop

of freshly-pressed

moon juice.

Moon is

somersaulting C

in the best moon font.

Moon is fickle flickerer.

Moon is

new lunar lantern

to track a star or two.

But mostly,

moon is

shy to