4 likes, 0 comments - daisymayjohnsonbooks on January 6, 2026: "Your delightful covers for today come from the Collins reprints of Elsie J. Oxenham's Abbey books. I have a bit of a mixed relationship...

Author Visits Editorial Research Tutoring Author visits I am available for school visits to talk about How To Be Brave, How To Be True and How To Be Free. My talks include a general introduction to…

ALT: a woman sitting on a red couch with a caption that says " my entire life i 've been waiting for this moment

Answers! Get your answers! (And if you’re looking for the original quiz itself, then here you go). Round One: Lucky Thirteen! Room 13 = Robert Swindells The Secret of Platform 13 = Eva Ibbots…

Answers! Get your answers! (And if you’re looking for the original quiz itself, then here you go). Round One: Lucky Thirteen! Room 13 = Robert Swindells The Secret of Platform 13 = Eva Ibbots…

Answers! Get your answers! (And if you're looking for the original quiz itself, then here you go). Round One: Lucky Thirteen! Room 13 = Robert Swindells The Secret of Platform 13 = Eva Ibbotson The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear = Walter Moers 13 Secrets = Michelle Harrison The 13-Storey Treehouse = Andy Griffiths Round Two: Trilingual Translations The Chalet School Wins the Tour = The Chalet School Wins The Trick A Headmaster of the Chalet School = A Leader in the Chalet School The Chalet School Repeats the Violation = The Chalet School Does It Again…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, the one where I try to desperately avoid making typos and hope that I’ve not messed up (apologies in advance if I have….) – it…

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, the one where I try to desperately avoid making typos and hope that I've not messed up (apologies in advance if I have....) - it's the Christmas quiz! If you're new here, I've done a Christmas quiz of a Very Niche Literary Nature over the past few years (here's the archive). I publish the quiz itself on Christmas Eve and you get the answers on New Year's Eve. It is a thank you to you and yours for all your support over the year.

I wanted to do a round up of some of the scholarly and non-fiction reads that I'm looking forward to next year. Some of them have been published for a while and some of them are due to be published in 2026; some of them are very much related to my research while others are more tangential things. All of them look enormously fascinating and I hope they give you some inspiration for next year's reading. I first saw mention of A Practical Companion to Children's Literature Studies: Conducting Research and Building a Career…

The Village by Marghanita Laski My rating: 5 of 5 stars There is something beyond delicious about finding a new author whose every word on every page is simply good. The Village by Marghanita Laski was something I picked up almost by accident, attracted more by the copy of Dimanche and Other Stories, and then chosen simply for the buy one get one free offer that the shop had on. But oh, what a treat such moments are, such little twists of fate when they give you an author whom you know nothing about and whose pages just give you the good stuff from day one, such small, immense moments!

Rhythm is a comforting thing in picture books. At a stage when the reader is pre-literate, or developing their literacy, and the book is being delivered in the norm by another, literate, individual, the aural nature of language comes to prominence. Or, to be less wordy, rhythm and rhyme are deliciously divine.