Inspiring and challenging children through beautifully written, beautifully illustrated stories.
The Bear, the Piano, the Dog and the Fiddle, by David Litchfield, is our book of the week this week. We want every illustration for our walls, they add such detail and depth to this beautifully moving tale of friendship, they’re amazing! We look for stories that show male characters experiencing the full realm of […]
We found a book the other day, that featured a Dad, cooking dinner and doing the childcare. Working Mums So far, no big surprise, millions of men do this everyday. But not in the land of stories. We read a LOT of children’s books and this year, we have found only two with working Mums […]
Nostalgia Childhood is shrouded in so much of our own nostalgia. I get a jolt in the opening bit of Star Wars, when the introductory words go up the screen. I feel it when I smell Charlie by Revlon, my Mum’s favourite perfume and there’s loads of it floating round at Christmas, when the fairy […]
This week’s Children’s book of the Week is… Luna Loves Library Day by Joseph Coelho and Fiona Lumbers. It’s a story that proves that with good writing and beautiful illustrations, children’s books can handle difficult topics in sensitive ways without them feeling too heavy or moralistic. This book is about a little girl’s visits to […]
Books take you on adventures and away from reality. A good book absorbs you so fully, you feel as if you know the characters within the pages. We want all children to experience that love of books and to learn about the world at the same time. Stack those shelves A lot of us have […]
It’s one year ago today since we opened the website of the UK’s first inclusive and representative children’s book club. The past 12 months have been busy. July 2018 We opened our cyber doors and I immediately did an up the nose interview with Sky News. I was 5 months pregnant, it was the hottest […]
Parents and carers are being asked to help children beat the Summer Reading Loss by joining children’s book organisation, Little Box of Books, in a Summer of reading. Their campaign #40daysofreading encourages families to read for 10 minutes every day throughout the holidays, helping children to maintain their levels of literacy while not in lessons. […]
We have a busy eight-month-old. He’s surrounded by books all the time because of what we do. Some of our reading sessions with him have been pure torture so I thought I’d just share a few tips on how to keep their attention and launch that early love of reading. Five tips for reading with […]
Our book of the week is this absolute beauty from Candy Gourlay and Francesca Chessa. In ‘Is it a Mermaid?’, a creature that looks like a Dugong tells Benji and Bel that she is, in fact, a mermaid. Bel is accepting and supportive, Benji wants to point out all the things that prove she is […]
This blog was published for World Book Day 2019 as part of the Glare Project at Birmingham University. Original post here. The conversation we have most regularly with parents is probably the one about gender. It usually starts with someone defensively saying, “We haven’t encouraged it, but our little girl just loves princesses and pink.” […]