Newton Residents To Award Children’s Poetry Competition Winners

NEWTON, MA – Winners of the Boston Children’s Poetry competition will take part in an award ceremony on Thursday, June 15 at 5 p.m. at the Newtonville Bookstore in Newton Center.

The non-profit competition was founded by two Newton residents and sisters, Maya and Alissa Rabin, who created the organization after the closure of a beloved bookstore.

The Children’s Book Shop, formerly located in Brookline, closed its doors in April 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after 45 years in operation.

To give other children the same opportunity to share poetry with others and experienced judges, the sisters created the nonprofit organization Boston Children’s Poetry, Org.

This is the competition’s inaugural year, Irene Porokhova, a board member and judge in the competition wrote over email.

Over 500 kids, ages 4 through 15, from 47 schools across the state submitted their haikus and poems to a panel of judges, Porokhova said.

The competition is designed to encourage children from pre-K through 8th grade to share their poems with the public and read the poetry of other young poets to create a vibrant community of their own.