Family Poetry

Matthew Turner doesn't have faith in anything. Not in family - his is a shambles after his younger brother was bullied into suicide. Not in so-called friends who turn their backs when things get tough. Not in some all-powerful creator who lets too much bad stuff happen. And certainly not in some "It Gets Better" psychobabble. No matter what his girlfriend Hayden says about faith and forgiveness, there's no way Matt's letting go of blame.

Hush, Little Bunny is a heartwarming, lyrical love letter from a papa bunny to his little one - from David Ezra Stein, Caldecott Honor-winning creator of Interrupting Chicken and Leaves. "Hush Little Baby" is a lullaby that parents have sung to their children for generations. Now Caldecott Honor winner David Ezra Stein has reimagined the classic featuring an irresistible papa bunny and his little one.

Llama Llama's tooth is wiggling! Is it time for his first tooth to come out? He's excited, but anxious. Who is this tooth fairy everyone talks about? Mama Llama reassures him; the tooth will come out when it's good and ready. But no one is ready for what happens next.... Suddenly, the tooth is GONE! Where did it go? And will the tooth fairy come at all, now? Anna Dewdney's fun rhyme is full of humor and comfort, and of course, a very happy ending.

Written in free verse, Hidden is a compelling tale about an unlikely friendship between two girls. Darra Monson and Wren Abbott first cross paths when Darra’s deadbeat dad is arrested for theft and kidnapping after he steals a car - unaware that Wren was sitting in the back. Years later, the girls - now teens - attend the same summer camp, and are forced to confront the fateful event that changed their lives.

The first collection of poetry from Bunmi Laditan, best-selling author of Confessions of a Domestic Failure and creator of The Honest Toddler, capturing the honesty, rawness, sheer joy, and total madness of motherhood. With the compassion and wit that have made her a social media sensation among mothers around the world, Bunmi Laditan puts into evocative and relatable words what so many of us feel but can’t quite express.

Collin James is young, creative, and unhappy. A college dropout, he waits tables and spends his free time beautifying the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his medium of choice: chalk. Collin's art captivates passersby with its vibrant colors and intricate lines - until the moment he wipes it all away. Nothing in Collin's life is meant to last. Then he meets Nina....

"Enoch Arden" is a long narrative poem that is built on a theme that has been widely explored in literature and on film. A man is separated from his family due to shipwreck and marooned on an island. After several years of absence from his home, it is assumed that he has died, and his wife remarries and starts a new family. After 10 years, the man finally makes his way home and has to deal with the trauma of discovering his wife and family happily established in a new relationship.

Phil Kaye’s debut collection is a stunning tribute to growing up, and all of the challenges and celebrations of the passing of time, as jagged as it may be. Kaye takes the listener on a journey from a complex but iridescent childhood, drawing them into adolescence, and finally on to adulthood. There are first kisses, lost friendships, hair blowing in the wind while driving the vastness of an empty road, and the author in the middle, trying to make sense of it all. Date & Time is a welcoming story, which freezes the calendar and allows us all to live in our best moments.

Blythe Baird’s If My Body Could Speak is a celebration of girlhood and all of its struggles and triumphs. In poems that dig deep into sexuality, acceptance of the body, survival of trauma, and learning to love yourself in spite of everything telling you not to, Baird’s voice is a rich addition to her generation. Searing, soaring, and heartbreaking, If My Body Could Speak balances the softness of femininity with the sharpness that girls are forced to become.

From brave and bold to creative and clever, Emily Winfield Martin's rhythmic rhyme expresses all the loving things that parents think of when they look at their children.

Drawing from his experience as a translator, Forrest Gander includes, in the first powerfully elegiac section, a version of a poem by the Spanish mystical poet St. John of the Cross. He continues with a long multilingual poem examining the syncretic geological and cultural history of the US border with Mexico. The poems of the third section - a moving transcription of Gander’s efforts to address his mother dying of Alzheimer’s - rise like hymns, transforming slowly from reverence to revelation.

Rese Barrett and Lance Michelli have agreed to run her Sonoma B&B as partners. But Lance is still driven to unravel the mystery behind papers he found buried in the basement there: papers left by his grandfather, who built this house two generations ago. Now they have gone to Lance's family in New York to find some answers.

There were many things that Hollie McNish didn't know before she was pregnant. How her family and friends would react; that Mr Whippy would be off the menu; how quickly ice can melt on a stomach. These were on top of the many other things she didn't know about babies: how to stand while holding one; how to do a poetry gig with your baby as a member of the audience; how drum'n'bass can make a great lullaby. But Hollie learned. And she's still learning, slowly.

In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle’s abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on—to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in.

From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between.

Twelve-year-old Victoria Reeves is all set for her “First Magnificent Summer with Dad,” even though it’s been more than two years since she last saw him. She’s ready to impress him with her wit, her maturity, and her smarts—at least until he shows up for the long road trip to Ohio with his new family, The Replacements, in tow. But that’s not the only unpleasant surprise in store for Victoria. As Victoria captures every moment of her less than magnificent summer in her journal, she discovers that the odds are stacked against her in the contest-no-one-knows-is-a-contest.

The author of the number one New York Times best seller What Kind of Woman returns with a collection of erasure poems created from notes she received from followers, supporters, and detractors — an artform that reclaims the vitriol from online trolls and inspires listeners to transform what is ugly or painful in their own lives into something beautiful.

“When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.” So ends Kate Baer’s remarkable poem “Things My Girlfriends Teach Me”. In “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels” she challenges her listener to consider their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem “Deliverance” about her son's birth she writes, “What is the word for when the light leaves the body/What is the word for when it/ at last, returns”.

Kate Baer shot into the literary stratosphere with the publication of her debut poetry collection, What Kind of Woman, which became an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Kate’s second full-length book of traditional poetry, And Yet, dives deeper into the themes that are the hallmarks of her writing: motherhood, friendship, love, and loss. Taken together, these poems demonstrate the remarkable evolution of a writer working at the height of her craft, pushing herself and her poetry in a beautiful and impressive way.

The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray, Bella Thorne’s collection of illuminating and inspiring poems chronicles her personal struggles, relationships, and wild-child lifestyle, all with her trademark wit and wisdom.