April’s Monthly Stories and Poems

For all our Monthly Poems and Stories packs for Reader Leaders in 2026, we’re following strands of feeling and ideas connected to our Reader Bookshelf theme, which is ‘The Home We Carry’. So, for our April pack we’ve taken the theme of ‘a home for all’, and through this we’ve brought together a selection of literature about the environment, and the habitats of animals and birds, to ponder the ways in which ‘home’ could be a more-than-human idea.

There is an extract from one of the books on our 2026 Bookshelf for young people, The Wind in the Willows, chosen by The Reader’s Head of Shared Reading Practice, Clare Ellis. Clare provided the following note to Reader Leaders, to accompany the extract:

‘Do you know that I did not discover the joys of The Wind in the Willows until I was 42 years old? A bit late in my reading journey but reading it felt like tonic to my soul at the time. Great children's literature can unlock things for us as adults in such a special way; can give us freedom into perspectives other than our own locked-in realities, and also help us talk about difficult life experiences in new, perhaps more accessible, ways. I hope this extract encourages your readers - even if they now all officially ‘grown-up’ - to remember the shared home not only of nature, as we see here in this extract with 'Nature's Grand Hotel', but also the home of our own childhood imaginations.’

A story from the world of the Moomins by Tove Jansson, and the poem ‘Gorse’ by Robert Macfarlane from his book Lost Spells, are two more pieces of literature in this month’s pack that are ostensibly written for children, but hold plenty to spark rich discussion and reflection by adults too.

There is an essay from another of our Bookshelf texts, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer – the creation story from the Iroquois tradition as told by Kimmerer in the opening pages of the book. The poem ‘The Exposed Nest’ by Robert Frost, also included in this month’s pack, is about the discovery of a nest of baby birds left vulnerable and unprotected in a hayfield, and picks up on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s uneasy thoughts elsewhere in her collection about human intervention in natural habitats, however well-meaning:

‘We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it’

April’s selections are:

Stories & extracts

‘Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, Derelict’, a story by Lucy Wood

‘A Mother’s Work’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer

‘The Invisible Child’ by Tove Jansson

‘Wayfarer’s All’: Chapter 9, from The Wind in the Willows

‘The White Heron’, a story by Sarah Orne Jewett

Poetry

‘Nameless Islets’ by Kathleen Raine

‘Gorse’ by Robert Macfarlane

‘Where is My Friend?’ by Dorianne Laux

‘Wind in the Willows’ by Jane Routh

‘The Exposed Next’ by Robert Frost

By Frances Macmillan (Literature Engagement Lead at The Reader)