Daisy May Johnson
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chaletfan.bsky.social
Daisy May Johnson
@chaletfan.bsky.social
1.3K followers 640 following 610 posts
Author of How To Be Free, How To Be Brave & How To Be True. I also research school stories, juvenilia, and girlhood in children's books.

didyoueverstoptothink.com
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chaletfan.bsky.social
Advertise your account with just one image
A search history screen showing a current search for the Guardian and a historic search for "guy charlton sadlers wells"
October 29, 2025 at 8:27 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
I always enjoy the ambition of these emails
A snippet of an email from Goodreads offering the chance to "get updates on the author" and a picture of David Niven who, I suspect, will not be updating his author profile very soon.
October 28, 2025 at 6:15 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Hello everyone! Just to give you a taster of the children's lit class - one of the assignments is to pick / make a case for a book to add to the class library of twentieth century children's literature. Here's some of the (excellent!) picks from the most recent intake...
The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
October 21, 2025 at 9:23 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
🎵 tale as old as tiiime 🎵
"Thank you for applying for tickets for: Strictly Come Dancing We're sorry to let you know that on this occasion you have been unsuccessful
October 13, 2025 at 5:03 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Bonus points if you know why this author rings a bell
A copy of No Magic Carpet by Phyllis Matthewman.
October 11, 2025 at 5:32 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
book clear out (sad music, sympathy, thank you kindly)

I'll be listing these for sale over the next few days but if anybody's interested, please do pop me a message and an offer (happy to do more pics and condition reports etc).
October 4, 2025 at 4:17 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Today's read is thoroughly enjoyable (home educators - this might be v much up your street - a lot of different topics and v interesting angles). So far we've had a day in the life of a Nazca condor; a camel on the Silk Road; and a sandstone bock which becomes part of Angkor Wat. It's pretty fab.
October 3, 2025 at 3:34 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Good afternoon! Today's read is Tom Swift And The Captive Planetoid by Victor Appleton II and, as with the other books in this series, it has an absolutely outstanding cover. There's not a Tom Swift cover I wouldn't have framed - the panache of them!
The front cover to Tom Swift and the Captive Planetoid by Victor Appleton II. It shows a young man in space. He is working levers next to a 'window' like panel where he can see a space ship lowering (or picking up?) a silver ball from the planetoid itself. This description does not come close to describing how banging it is.
September 7, 2025 at 3:51 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Today's read
August 31, 2025 at 11:06 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Happy #YorkshireDay! I am very proud to be a Northern writer and to tell the stories that I get to tell and to feature the places I feature in my books. Here is one of my favourite places to celebrate today - the North York Moors. (it is very nice, you'd like it lots).
August 1, 2025 at 8:30 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Bonus points if you spot the Elsie J O Easter Egg in my MYSTERIOUS NEW PROJECT I CANNOT TALK ABOUT YET.

But also, when I was checking the spelling, the first result made me laugh a lot
A screenshot of a search result. It refers to Mary Dorothy Devine and describes her as "Mary is thirty, going on sixty"
July 17, 2025 at 5:32 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Alongside my writing, I also research juvenilia and the experience of young writers so the new DFE Writing Framework is super interesting. I'm very struck, in particular, by the appendix on how to select model texts - it's always intriguing to me that authors are conceptualised as adult / authority.
Appendix C: Selecting model texts To develop their understanding of the structures of different types of text, pupils need to study model texts which provide ‘opportunities to read, analyse, and emulate models of good writing’131. The following four principles can be useful: • the writing of texts should be integrated with the reading of similar texts • the exemplar text needs to highlight the features, including the structural features of that specific text type • teachers must scaffold the analysis of the exemplar text to ensure pupils attend to the specific features – both organisational (structural) and language features • the texts must illustrate clearly the specific features of effective writing. The teachers may therefore need to write the text Selecting models to exemplify the particular structure being taught requires a nuanced approach, depending on the purpose of the text and what is being analysed and taught. It is important that pupils are not asked to write a text when they have little or limited experience of reading such texts. They need to have sufficient support to feel confident about success. Teacher-written text A teacher-written text is often most effective when it exemplifies the structure and language devices that are the focus of the teaching. Advantages include: • production of a text based on the teacher’s knowledge of the class • the teacher’s knowledge and authority as the author of the text • the teacher’s control of all the content of the text, which might include recently taught content for revisiting and assessment • the opportunity for the teacher to refer to their own choices and strategies – and, possibly, changes – when discussing and analysing the text with the class • the opportunity to adapt and adjust the text so that it is accessible for all pupils Mentor text If the teacher wishes to draw attention explicitly to the choices writers make in order to develop pupils’ metalinguistic awareness and strengthen the link between reading and writing, a text written by a recognised and published writer/author is a good choice. Often known as ‘mentor texts’, such texts allow the teacher to: 131 Graham, S. and Perin, D., 2007. A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99. 105 • focus on the devices and language structures the author has chosen and analyse their effects on the reader • encourage deeper thinking about the relationship between linguistic choices and meaning • draw on the authority of a recognised author • enable the pupils to ‘sit beside the author and study how the text is constructed and how it communicates’132 • highlight how the author develops clarity and coherence for a non-present reader • link the text to the socially determined location in which the writing is situated: where is the text published? in what format? for whom? why did the author write it? WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) If a text is to exemplify the quality to which pupils are to aspire, a text written by a proficient writer might be used. It could be written by a teacher but could also be selected from a bank of exemplar texts created by the school or available elsewhere. Such texts: • are written above the pupils’ instructional level • are written at a level that is achievable by some pupils but that will motivate and support all pupils • contain all the language features and structures that would be included if a pupil were to achieve all the objectives All types of model texts can support pupils’ writing, and a variety may be used over a sequence of lessons, depending on the objectives.
July 13, 2025 at 12:01 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
I would genuinely watch a three hundred part HBO drama about behind the scenes at Bunty because honestly, there is nothing about that comic that I do not love.
A Bed Called Fred: A Girl is pushing a four poster bed named Fred all the way from John O'Groats to Land's End Georgie and Griff – Georgie Mair comes to Camelot to attend Camelot Ladies' College and stay with Professor Hyslop, her uncle. Georgie has brought with her Griff, her invisible pet griffin. Sally on Planet Serbos – Sally Martin, a local "Space Invaders" champion on Earth, is transported to the planet Serbos, to help clear up some of the troublemakers who have descended on the planet since uranium was discovered there. Wendy's Wonder Horse – After a bad riding accident, Wendy Barne's father, a scientist, makes her an electronic horse she names Miracle. The horse has extra abilities such as extendible legs and eye beams.
July 8, 2025 at 8:44 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
There's going to be a moment in my life when I invent a time machine specifically to go back and tell the Angela Brazil reprint cover team how much I adore their work.
A book called The School At The Turrets by Angela Brazil sits on a plain wood desk. The cover is utterly fabulous and shows a child dropping off a tree trunk into some water and a girl jumping into to rescue him (epic, epic).
June 28, 2025 at 10:51 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Happy #Pride month! If you're interested in a potential new relevant read for this month then you might be interested in my How To Be True with @pushkinchildrens.bsky.social. I am very proud of one of the key plots in it & I hope that if you've not yet discovered it, then you enjoy it when you do.
The front cover of How To Be True by Daisy May Johnson
June 1, 2025 at 4:47 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Happy National Biscuit Day!

"You really should have an Emergency Biscuit store in your house. A sock drawer would be ideal ... make sure that the socks are clean and that the biscuits are wrapped. There is no joy to be found in a crumbly sock drawer."

@pushkinchildrens.bsky.social #booksky
Three brightly coloured book covers sit against an orange background surrounded by white doodles. The books are How To Be Brave, How To Be True and How To Be Free and they are all by Daisy May Johnson.
May 29, 2025 at 8:33 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
Thank you for this! I'm Daisy May Johnson and I've three middle grade boarding school stories @pushkinchildrens.bsky.social. pushkinpress.com/our-authors/... My books are about best friends forever, figuring out who you are within the world, well-timed slices of cake, & a Heartfelt Dislike Of Kale.
Three book covers on bright backgrounds. From left to right, they are How To Be Brave, How To Be True and How To Be Free, all by Daisy May Johnson.
May 14, 2025 at 3:37 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
The thing with going through your photos for something is that you find a photo that captured one of the best things you ever read
May 9, 2025 at 3:03 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
let's add the pic, let's go wild, social media with pics, who'da thunk it.
A piece of blurb on the back of a book. The book is green and sits on a brown desk. The blurb reads: "Jean goes away to school and has to leave her pony behind. But in the Christmas holidays she hunts for the first time. And as a reward for a very good deed she is given a most wonderful present - another pony."
May 3, 2025 at 5:04 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
On bank holiday weekends we wear pink (and buy pony books).
A pile of books rest on a brown table, spine out. They include titles by Joanna Cannan, Christine Pullein-Thompson, Elynne Mitchell and Mary Gervaise.
May 3, 2025 at 4:54 PM
chaletfan.bsky.social
(you'll regret this 🤣) This is an activity book called The Second Hundred Things A Girl Can Make (1940s) and the other activity is "Nightmare Faces" where we cut the fingers off from mother's old kid gloves, draw faces on them, do a performance with them, and are all, I think, scarred for life.
A series of kind of hideous finger puppets on the end of fingers.
April 7, 2025 at 11:50 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
brb, just building a time machine so I can go back and worship the person who wrote this opener
A piece of text on a page. A title reads: "Can you walk through a post-card?" and the two following lines reply with a deft perfection: "Of course you cannot. The thing seems quite impossible."
April 7, 2025 at 10:44 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
I have been doing some tidying and upgrading of the ol' collection and so have a few paperbacks for sale. If you're interested, please send me a private message. More than happy to take offers. Do note Joey & Co has some damage on the spine - happy to share more pics.
April 4, 2025 at 9:02 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
"The Atlantic broke the story of how Meta has used the Library Genesis (LIbGen) dataset, which is full of pirated material, to develop their AI systems" (societyofauthors.org/2025/04/01/s...) & I've been fuming ever since. Here's a link to the change.org petition - www.change.org/p/protect-au...
A poster which reads "Lisa Nandy #dothewritething and protect authors' livelihoods from the unlicensed use of their work in AI Training"
April 3, 2025 at 8:29 AM
chaletfan.bsky.social
I really would like to do a fifteen million word discussion of the absolute trip that this is (if you know, you know) so please do note that my dms are, as they say, open.
March 2, 2025 at 5:53 PM