Josie Whitehead Biography

I have been a teacher for most of my life but, in my retirement, I volunteered an hour a week to the children in my local school. There I met a class of 'unhappy' children who told me that the cause of their unhappiness was 'poetry'. I couldn't understand this because I always loved the poems of my childhood. They showed me what they'd just had in their lesson and it was a sentence spiralling down the page. It did nothing to excite/delight the mind of a child. So I've written 1,500 new poems for them and I'm just about to have my 6th book published. There are 1,500 poems on my internet website (Google: JOSIE'S POEMS) and they reach children in 188 countries of the world who tell me they are delighted with my work. And 'why' you may ask. It is because I write with rhyme, with metre/rhythm and with lots of stories or pictures painted in words. One of my poems has been animated (The Wizard of Alderley Edge) , several have been turned into songs: (Google JOSIE'S POEMS/POEMS FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN - end of list) and you'll find them. I write in words that children understand and I paint pictures in words. This is what children love - not words spiralling down the page without punctuation and with a meaning which (if it were ever there) has been lost somewhere on the way.

Tell them stories, make them laugh, put rhyme and metre into your writing and don't try to hide the meaning of what you are writing. When writing to children remember that they don't have a degree in psychology. They're children and they like fun. Oh, I should add that most of we adults don't have a degree in psychology either - so make your meaning clear, not hidden behind a frost of wordy glass. How's that for a metaphor?