It’s National Poetry Day today and, if you know Storytime magazine, you’ll know that we are passionate about poetry for kids and always feature it in every issue – from well-loved classics to contemporary poems.

In fact, we love poetry for kids so much, our latest issue features a rockin’ Brian Moses poem, The Budgie Likes to Boogie, which also made our cover.

Plus, we’re running a brilliant poetry competition for kids, giving one lucky winner the opportunity to have their work illustrated and published in Storytime.

To support this, we’ve also put together a Poetry for Kids Activity and Resource Pack for parents and teachers, with tips on writing poetry and lots of fun, creative and engaging exercises. It’s free to download from our Storytime for Schools site. There are more resources available from the good people at National Poetry Day.

But, all that aside, we thought we’d celebrate National Poetry Day this year by sharing a poem we put together about our love for books. Yes, we’re a magazine, but one of our long-held ambitions is that we can be a springboard for young or reluctant readers – an enjoyable and accessible entry point to the world of books. That’s not to devalue our content – we’re also deeply committed to keeping short stories alive, but we truly believe all reading is good reading, whatever the format.

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day is ‘messages’ and that’s our message… poetry, magazines, books – it’s all good! We hope you agree.

Happy Poetry Day to you all – we hope you’ll celebrate with a few poems!