Good morning. The Detective and I have stepped out to work on some things: I am working on a MG graphic novel idea; he is working on sitting still for five minutes.

Can anyone recommend some #kidlit in which the main character is a fictionalised version of the author?

I'm thinking:
Mac B., Kid Spy
The Saga of Darren Shan
A Series of Unfortunate Events (sort of)

Is there a name for this? Author surrogate/avatar doesn't seem quite right.

A longtime resident of the to-read pile: Daemon Voices by Philip Pullman. Here's a picture of me holding it.

I re-read His Dark Materials in the spring and picked up Pullman's annotated Paradise Lost a few weeks later.

With The Rose Field due in autumn, this is long overdue.

#kidlit #booksky

We just got home after two weeks in the south of France with my in-laws. That meant working hard on my French. I was also working on actual work. In fact, the only things I took a break from were my personal projects.

This was something we said again and again in interviews and talks about the Ladybird books.

When you give a child something made carefully and skilfully, they feel it. A treat. “For me?”

We all remember that feeling.

When you give a child something half-arsed, you tell them they don’t matter.

I keep seeing generative AI being used on stuff for kids, like maybe they won’t notice, or it doesn’t matter as much. The opposite is true. Anyone who’s created anything for kids knows you should make more effort for them, not less.

New on the bookshelf (as recommended by Taylor Sterling of Moonbow) is Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Here's a photo of me holding it.

moonbowbooks.substack.com/p/5-books-to...

Everyone thinks I took up running to get fit but really I just had six unused Audible credits.

#ILikeKidLitBecause I can't always convince my wife we have room for a new 500-page novel but I can always convince her we have room for a new 32-page picturebook.

Find someone who looks at you the way Mac Barnett looks at Jon Klassen.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

— Harper Lee,”To Kill a Mockingbird”

I mentioned a few days ago that I hadn't really used social media since the infamous (and divisive) Bad Art Friend story. It feels like a good sign that the Muppet thread is one of the first things I saw when I decided to come back almost five years later. Thank you Katie!

Oh, I wouldn't touch that if I were you. That "to read" pile is load-bearing.

I’ve been off social media since the "Bad Art Friend" story of 2021. Mostly, I was tired of moving between this and that site. Then I read Taylor Sterling’s post about starting over with Moonbow. Thanks Taylor. I think I’ll give somewhere new a shot.

moonbowbooks.substack.com/p/how-to-wri...

Anybody down to hang out and talk about children's books?