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Meet Team YKNR in Brisbane

Sep 04, 2023

Last month, the Your Kid’s Next Read team held a Zoom event to celebrate the launch of our many books (well, four, but many sounds better, right?).

It was such a success, with 120+ tickets booked, that we’ve decided to do it all again, but this time face to face!

Join us at Brisbane’s Lourdes Hill College at 6pm on Wednesday 13th September, where we’ll be chatting about our new books, as well as diving into some of the most popular questions and topics from the Your Kid's Next Read community and podcast.

Whether you're a parent, carer, teacher, T/L, creator, librarian or other interested party, this one is for you! And we’re ready to answer your questions as well!

Thanks to Riverbend Books, we’ll also have books on sale – ours and a good selection of our recommendations.

We're passionate about kids, books and reading and we can't wait to meet you – and have you meet each other!

EDITED 6/9: Sadly, we’ve had to cancel our event for family reasons. Apologies to ticket holders. We will reschedule asap and be back with a new date.

UPDATES FROM TEAM YKNR

One thing we’re looking forward to doing next week when we’re all in the same room is getting some new photos taken. Last time we did it, this reel was the result…

Anything will be a step up from our selfie game (example below from last year).

HELLO FROM MEGAN DALEY

Megan is an award-winning teacher-librarian working in Brisbane, the author of Raising Readers: How to nurture a child’s love of books, and co-host of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast. She is also a sought-after public speaker, literary judge, creator of the popular website Children's Books Daily and editor of the brand-new anthology ‘Teacher, Teacher’ from Affirm Press. More about Megan here.

Gosh! So much happening in Megan Land right now I don’t know where to start… From choosing senior subjects with the eldest, Year Seven ‘step up day’ for the middle one, Varoa Mite threatening The Beekeeper’s hives, CBCA Book Week Recovery and prepping for events including our YKNR event and a conference in New Zealand it’s been general life chaos and joy over here.

As much as I adore CBCA Book Week and the opportunity to celebrate Australian books and creators, there is always a slight sense of relief when it’s over and we slide on into September!

If you’ve been listening to the podcast you’ll know that Allison’s current Quick Tip week (ep 118) is to think ahead to your author wishlist for next year’s CBCA Book Week – and if you listen this week (ep 119), you’ll hear my thoughts on reflecting on Book Week 2023 with your library team and your school staff.

We don’t always have to repeat what we have done for the last 15 years and now is the perfect time to really reflect on how you’d like Book Week 2024 to look and feel for your school community.

MEGAN’S BOOKMARK REVIEWS

Each month, I share full reviews of two outstanding books that have crossed my desk. Bookmark these for your young readers.

‘Burn’ by Melanie Saward

Melanie Saward is a proud descendant of the Bigambul and Wakka Wakka peoples. She is a Tulmur (Ipswich) based writer, an associate lecturer in creative writing at QUT, and a PhD student. ‘Burn’ is an incredibly powerful young adult novel about the effects of intergenerational trauma that asks the reader to ponder why good kids do bad things.

When a tragic bushfire puts two kids in hospital, Indigenous teenager Andrew knows the police will come after him first. But Andrew almost wants to be caught, because at least it might make his dad come and rescue him from suburban Brisbane and his neglectful mother.

Growing up in small-town Tasmania, Andrew struggled at home, at school, at everything. The only thing that distracted or excited him was starting little fires. Flames boosted his morale and purified his thoughts, and they were the only thing in his life he could control. Until one day things got out of hand, and Andrew was forced to leave everything behind.

Now as the police close in and Andrew runs out of people to turn to, he must decide whether he can put his faith in himself to find a way forward.

Once I actually made the time (necessary these days!) to read ‘Burn’, I was unable to put it down – a compelling YA read. I was utterly drawn into the world of Andrew and deeply felt his sense of disconnection from place and his inner turmoil, which is balanced by his sass and humour.

While ‘Burn’ is a powerful YA novel with big themes including pyromania, disconnection and trauma, it is also sparkles with compassion and hope – and is a book that I will be thinking about for some time to come.

‘Millie Mak the Maker’ by Alice Pung. Illustrated by Sher Rill Ng

Nine-year-old Millie Mak has discovered she has a superpower!

Using everyday objects, Millie turns them into something new, beautiful and useful. Who would ever think that a sunhat could be made from an old bedsheet, a skirt from a tea-towel, or some hair scrunchies from a scarf?

Through her creativity and clever thinking, Millie also deals with different friendships, tricky family challenges, and contributes to the school fete.

You can make the special objects Millie creates from the detailed and yet easy-to-follow instructions included in the book. And best of all, nothing needs to be bought!

From award-winning author-illustrator team, Alice Pung and Sher Rill Ng, comes the first book in an inspiring new series for young and old makers.

That’s my Book Week 2024 costume sorted – Millie Mak for the win. I was a resourceful little creator myself as a child (still am I suppose) and I very much want my own children to have a life just like Millie Mak’s – one full of extended family and a diverse village, resourcefulness, recycling and upcycling, curiosity and creativity.

There is such joy, beauty, complexity and authenticity in contemporary, multicultural Australia and this book is such a glorious celebration of all this and so much more.

HELLO FROM ALLISON RUSHBY

The award-winning, bestselling author of many, many books for children and adults, Allison Rushby’s novels are firm favourites in the Your Kid’s Next Read community. Her latest illustrated junior fiction series, The Wish Sisters, is fast gaining fans. More about Allison R here.

What’s going on here? Hmmm … well, in between organising 5000 amazing YKNR giveaways, I seem to have started writing a new book. The story happens to kick off in 1662, which, fortunately and unfortunately, means a whole lot of research.

Fortunately because it means piles of reading as I learn more about the world of my characters and unfortunately because it means not getting a lot of writing done because I’m too busy reading. I can’t complain – it’s a good problem to have!

When I’ve not been writing, I’ve been busy organising the rest of the year, which seems to be creeping up way too quickly. Lucky for me, it’s stuffed full of fun writing workshops and Reader’s Cup events and the launch of two more books (Miss Penny Dreadful and the Mermaid’s Locks and The Wish Sisters – The Christmas Wish).

THREAD OF THE MONTH

Well, I don’t actually have a thread of the month this month. Instead, I’m going to let you in on some secret admin business.

Do you remember answering some questions when you joined the group? We have a couple questions to keep the bots out of the group (weirdly, at the moment, the bots seem to either reply YES to each question, tell us their “Farthr told us about this group”, or offer up random proposals of marriage).

I love reading about your favourite books and how you discovered YKNR. But I particularly loved this answer that came in the other day, which I thought was peak YKNR.

Thanks for talking us up everywhere, you guys!

HELLO FROM ALLISON TAIT

Writing as A. L. Tait, Allison is the internationally published, bestselling author of eight novels for middle-grade readers across three series: The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. She is an in-demand speaker for author visits and literary festivals, a writing teacher for kids and adults, co-host of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast and author of the brand-new middle-grade novel THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE. More about Allison here.

One of the best things about launching a book is getting to meet readers – and the book launch for THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE brought me that and more. Thanks to the wonderful team at Kiama Libraries (Gerringong), we held a Beach Art Competition, which brought such a wonderful backdrop to the launch.

It was also a brilliant visual representation of one of the cornerstones of my author talks for this book – that you can take a place you know, and make it new in the story you write. We all see places through our own eyes, and it’s how we evoke that setting that creates a new story.

The village of Sawyer’s Point, where Callie holidays in the novel, is set in the place that these young artists have captured with their paints and pencils. I think Callie would approve.

The novel has also received some fabulous reviews and one in particular caught my eye.

'Ms Tait can do no wrong,' says Zoe from I Dream Of All The Books (and, yes, I'll be getting that made into a fridge magnet so the family has a daily reminder). Full post here.

More tips for teen writers

SEPTEMBER BOOKMAIL WINNER

Each month, we’re giving away a prize pack consisting of some of the brilliant bookmail sent to us for the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast. One winner* is chosen from our full subscriber list by random draw and announced here!

There are NINE books in the SEPTEMBER prize pack.

The SEPTEMBER bookmail giveaway winner is …

Andrena Sadler

Congrats! We’ll be in touch by email.

*Australian mailing addresses only. Prize consists of one copy of each book pictured, sent as a pack to the winner by Australia Post. Winner will be contacted by email and prize must be claimed within 14 days or a redraw will take place. You must be subscribed to the YKNR newsletter by midnight (AEDST) the night before publication each month to be eligible to win. No correspondence will be entered into.

What would you like to ask us?

If you can’t make the YKNR Live event in Brisbane, you can still ask us a question! Ask your question in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer it – though it might take a blog post rather than a comment back!