June’s Stories and Poems

This month we are celebrating the natural world, and especially the many wonderful creatures that live within it, with June’s Monthly Stories and Poems based around the theme of wildlife. As summer begins, it can feel like the ideal time to get out and about and discover what is going on in the trees above, lakes surrounding and earth beneath us.

Over the next few months, we will be revisiting The Reader Bookshelf from its first five years, highlighting titles that have proved popular with Shared Reading groups as well as the more hidden gems that we want to bring back. June’s focus on wildlife ties in closely with ‘Walking the Earth’, which was the theme for The Reader Bookshelf 2021-22.

This month’s stories and extracts take us from the sprawling prairie lands of Nebraska in the United States of America, to a village in Nigeria, as well as to visit various forms of wildlife. We might often think of wildlife in terms of animals found in a zoo or on safari, but we’re reminded not to overlook much smaller creatures too, especially when their presence can make a big difference. Wildlife can be both beautiful, affording us the opportunity to pause and reflect, and sometimes brutal, reminding us of how as humans we can often look at animals with a view that prizes our own emotions and feelings.

June’s stories and extracts are:

The Silver Swan by Michael Morpurgo

The river in midsummer (extract from My Antonia) by Willa Cather

Explorations (extract from The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating) by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Looking Up by Ann Stapleton

The feast in the sky (extract from Things Fall Apart) by Chinua Achebe

These contrasting aspects of wildlife and nature are further explored in the poetry selections, with feelings of shock, wonder, mystery and even a sense of playfulness all explored through the ways in which we connect with the natural world.

Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford

The Badgers by Seamus Heaney

Bee Mornings by Julia Webb

Haikus by Basho

Snake by D.H. Lawrence