Book Review: I Tell Myself I'm Awesome by Joshua Seigal

By Jenni Harrison | Book Review

We take a look at Joshua Seigal's latest poetry collection for children 'I Tell Myself I'm Awesome'.

When we’ve surveyed teachers about teaching poetry in the past, one of the barriers that often came up was access to poetry books for children, or finding appropriate poems to share. If they do have poetry books in school they’re often years (sometimes decades) old. So when I saw that Joshua Seigal had written a brand-new collection of poems for children, I was genuinely excited.

A new collection of poems means a new opportunity to introduce children to poetry, whether that’s in the classroom or at home.

'I Tell Myself I'm Awesome' starts off with a wonderful message from the author: sometimes we don’t feel okay, and that’s okay. Not everyone feels awesome all the time, but there are things we can do to help ourselves feel even a tiny bit better. For Joshua Seigal, one of those things is reading and writing funny poems and that’s what inspired this collection.

It’s such a lovely way to start a children’s book. A child might pick this up in class or at home while feeling worried or sad, or even resentful or bored (because poetry is boring right? WRONG! If anyone tells you they don’t like poems, they just haven’t found the right one yet.) In just a couple of paragraphs, Joshua acknowledges those feelings without judgement, gives the reader permission to feel them, and then invites them to read his poems in the hope that they might feel a little bit more awesome afterwards.

The poems themselves cover a variety of subjects and styles. Some are silly, some are thoughtful, some offer advice. This collection shows children that poetry isn’t restricted to just one thing – it can be funny, serious, strange or playful. It also quietly and gently shows them that they aren’t the only ones to feel the emotions they might be feeling, a powerful thing for a child.  

The fun Joshua Seigal has with words is clear on every page, and I think it's brilliant for children to see that creative writing can be about play, experimentation and finding your voice. Reading poems in a real book, written by a real poet, where such fun is had with words, where they are played with, mixed up and (gasp!) even spelt incorrectly shows children that creative writing doesn't have to be about following the rules. For children who’ve only experienced creative writing through the lens of fronted adverbials, noun-verb agreements and the ‘correct’ way to write, reading poems like this could be genuinely seismic for their enthusiasm for writing.

Joshua Seigal also isn’t afraid of including more challenging words just because he’s writing for children. Reading is exploring. Reading is learning. Children won’t expand their vocabulary if the books written for them don’t give them the chance. Will the average 7-year-old know what idiosyncrasy means? Probably not. But by reading this book they’ll be exposed to it and maybe they’ll look it up to find out what it means. Maybe they won’t, but the next time they see it, they’ll have more context to build on, and that’s the first step in growing their vocabulary and confidence with language.

This collection is ideal for 7 and over, so it’s perfect for primary-aged readers. There are loads of poems that teachers can share in class, either as part of a poetry lesson, a fun five minutes of reading aloud, or to spark ideas for writing. It would also be a lovely addition to any school or home library for children to discover for themselves. I highly recommend it for any teacher or parent.

I Tell Myself I'm Awesome is out now, published by Bloomsbury and available in all good bookshops.

This isn’t our first encounter with Joshua Seigal. We first spoke to him all the way back in 2021 when he kindly offered his top tips for writing poems, so if your children are inspired to write their own poems after reading ‘I Tell Myself I’m Awesome’, then check out his Top Tips here.