Mandy Coe

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Biographical note:  Mandy Coe is the author of four volumes of poetry. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC television and radio (Woman’s Hour, Poetry Please) as well as being featured in the TES, Guardian and the Radio Times. She reads her work at literature events throughout the UK and runs poetry workshops for adults and young people within universities and community venues. She regularly collaborates with organisations such as the Poetry Society, the Barbican, Booktrust and Manchester University.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714872
ISBN:  9781844714872
Author:  Mandy Coe
Title:  If You Could See Laughter
Series:  Children's Poetry Library
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  YCET2
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Oct-10
Extent:  80pp
Height:  178 mm
Width:  110 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 6.99
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  If You Could See Laughter is Mandy Coe’s first collection of poetry for children. An award-winning poet, Mandy Coe has been commissioned by CBeebies, the Book Trust, the Barbican and National Poetry Day to write poems and educational material for children of all ages. Her poetry has been described as ‘…literally spell-binding’.

Main description:  If You Could See Laughter is Mandy Coe’s first collection of poetry for children. An award-winning poet, Mandy Coe is an educational specialist in poetry in schools and has been commissioned by CBeebies, the Book Trust, the Barbican and National Poetry Day to write poems and educational material for children of all ages. Her poetry has been described as ‘…literally spell-binding’.

Table of contents:
Acknowledgements
Advice for …
Seashell
Felt Funny All Day
'Flowers go to school underground'
Moorhen
Raw
Recipe for Good News
If You Could See Laughter
Too Young to Know
One Pair a Year
Thank You
Frog
Row Flow Blow
Sensing Mother
Sun Loves Moon
What Lives Down the Playground Drain
The Sunshine of Susan Browne
The Head's First Name
When Ms Smith Slammed the Classroom Door
Summer Song
Fizz
Bed of Glass
Opposites
The Gift
Assembly
Schoolday's End
Elemental Rules
Offended Cat
Queen of the Hive
The Strawberry-Yoghurt Smell of Words
Swimming on Christmas Day
Lighthouse
Being the Baddie
Bottling it Up
From the Mouths of Babes
Busy Feet
In My Name (MANDY)
Marsh-Sprite
Soft as the Blanket
Catch Words
Upon Once
Buttercup
Questions for a Dad
My Ma
Being Human
Wish
The Girl Who Discovered Fire
Me & You
Cloud That Fell
Music's Prayer
The Cancan
Extinct
Smile
Lost It, Found It
Dream Feast
Night Night

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Excerpt from book:  

If You Could See Laughter

Hey, it is blue! No, surely red
—the colour of each breath
pumped out by the joy of running
or the jumpstart of a joke.

Tickle-breath is long and spiral.
Pink
I think.

If you could see laughter
it would look like balloons,
the sort magicians knot in squeaky twists.
Laugh a giraffe, guffaw a poodle.

A belly-laugh creates balloons that float,
at the pantomime, the air of the theatre
jostles with colour.
See this baby reaching for your smile?
A yellow hiccup of laughter pops out,
bobs above us for days.

We could rise off the ground with laughter,
tie strings on it and sail around the world.

Unpublished endorsement:  Mandy Coe is one of our most exciting poets writing for children. Her quirky view of the world has a surreal edge and she manages to excite the imagination by ‘word surprises'. Well-crafted poems that take a new view on life.

Pie Corbett

Unpublished endorsement:  Teasing, provoking, sharing an irrepressible delight in the world around us, Mandy Coe's poems brim with a love of nature, a relish for colours, shapes, sounds and show by example what a wonderful, infinitely malleable thing our language is. This collection is wonderful to read alone, but will prove to be an essential teaching aid for any educator who wants to share a love of language and of simply being alive. She liberates the poet in all of us, old or young.

Sherry Ashworth

Review quote:  This book is exactly what it should be: useful, practical and detailed but also inspiring, enlightening and far-reaching. Writers as well as teachers will find it invaluable. I recommend it whole-heatedly.

Andrew Motion on Our thoughts are bees