📖Book Review ~ A Poem for Every Night of the Year : Edited by Allie Esiri

MacMillan Children’s Books
October 2026

 

A Poem For Every Night of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share for every night of the year with a special new cover for the 10th year anniversary. 

The poems – together with introductory paragraphs – have a link to the date on which they appear. Shakespeare celebrates midsummer night, Maya Angelou for International Women’s Day and Lewis Carroll on April Fool’s day.

Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it contains a full spectrum of poetry from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices. The special 10th anniversary edition A Poem for Every Night of the Year features the poetry of Rumi, Maya Angelou, Benjamin Zephaniah, George The Poet, Mandy Coe, John Updike, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, John Cooper Clark, Paul McCartney, Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy, Ezra Pound, Philip Larkin, Robert Frost, AA Milne, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, Lewis Carroll, W. H. Auden, Keats, Yates, Byron, Shelley, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling, William Shakespeare, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickenson, Tennyson, Amelia Earhart, Walt Witman, Margaret Atwood, Matsuo Basho, Walter de la Mare, DH Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, Simon Armitage, JK Rowling, Laurie Lee, Thomas Hardy and many more. 

📖 My Review..

This is such a delightful 10th anniversary hardback edition and definitely one to treasure and with its vast assortment of poetry there is something to suit all ages and tastes and is the perfect book to have on your bedside table. On first reading and as with all anthologies I dip into and out of at whim finding snippets of poems, some are old favourites like Abu Ben Adhem by Leigh Hunt whilst there were many others like Thunder by Elizabeth Bishop which were from poets I had never heard of before but they all added something rather special to this comprehensive anthology of verse.

Of course, I also looked up first those poems which were featured on significant dates like my birthday and wedding anniversary and as I was reading I thought what a great introduction to poetry this book is, with poems long and short, funny and sad, I shall definitely look forward to having a whole year of poetry as my bedtime reading. Being introduced to new poems and poets is what makes this such a special anthology and with 366 poems, this is not only great value for money but is also something to treasure.

About the Author

Allie Esiri’s best-selling poetry anthologies include Shakespeare For Every Day Of The Year, A Poem For Every Day Of The Year and 365 Poems For Life. They have lit an explosion of interest in poetry in the UK, are regularly chosen for National Poetry Day and have been picked as best books of the year by The Observer, The Times and New Statesman. Yearly sell out performances at the National Theatre and major book festivals with some of our best-loved actors reading poetry – from Helena Bonham Carter to Dominic West – are capturing and enthralling a new generation of poetry lovers. 

Esiri read Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge then worked as an actress for ten years in the English Shakespeare Company and on TV in shows such as Sharpe, Men Behaving Badly and Poirot, before moving on to create the first poetry apps, daily poetry anthologies (for all ages) and live shows.

Website

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📚Book Nostalgia ~ The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Welcome to my Book Nostalgia feature where I'm allowing myself the luxury of going back in time with some of my favourite reads. Over the past 15 years of blogging I have been privileged to read some amazing books which have featured on my BOOKS OF THE YEAR list.

Sometimes it’s good to revisit these stories in order to remember those extra special books which have influenced my reading over the last 15 years..

Come along with with me and let's wallow in a book memory from 2013..

Bloomsbury
2013

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Welcome to Scion: No safer place 

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe. 

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing. 

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal – and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.

Set in 2059, in a dystopian future where London is a hot bed of intrigue and moral turpitude, nineteen year old Paige Mahoney, is a dream walker and clairvoyant, working as part of an elite criminal underworld in the notorious Seven Dials area of Scion London. On a rainy day, and due to a catastrophic error of judgement, Paige is kidnapped, drugged and taken to the secret city of Oxford, where she is assigned to a Rephaite, who becomes her master, and who is as mysterious, as he is deadly. In this whole new world, complete with its own syntax and idiom, Paige must learn to curb her natural instincts, or risk the consequences.

I read this debut novel when it was first published in 2013 and this talented young author has since gone on to write many more novels, including five, and a soon to be published sixth book in The Bone Season Series. I remember being so impressed with the power of the story and fully intended to carry on with the series but sadly I haven’t managed to catch up with them all. However, The Bone Season remains one of my favourite debut novels, so here’s what I thought about it in 2013…

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The Bone Season is unlike anything I have ever read before, and so far out of my comfort zone, that I am at a loss to know where to start to evaluate the story, but I can’t do the author or the story a disservice by describing all that happens. Heck, even after finishing the book, I still don’t know half of what happens, but what I do know, is that this is a remarkably good debut novel. The strength of imagination needed to control a world within a world is finely explored, and the inspired use of original and highly inventive terminology adds authority to a story which ultimately takes you by surprise and leaves you, in the end, wanting more. Thankfully, there is a wonderful glossary which reveals a vocabulary which gets to be so utterly familiar, you find that you want to drop the vernacular into your own life; I mean who can resist a good Flash House?

There are going to be the inevitable comparisons made between The Bone Season and recent trends in popular fiction, and yes, it does have some of the magical elements of Rowling’s Harry Potter, the otherworldliness of Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and some of its own shades of grey in the relationship between keeper and voyant , but ultimately, what’s important is that you should read the book on its own merits, and judge it against none – merely enjoy a good story, settle in and take your seat for a ride to Scion London.