It's reading season
5 top tips to help kids make the most of winter
With winter upon us and, as we write this, much of the East Coast of Australia under a blanket of rain, Team YKNR is hunkering down for our favourite time of the year: Reading Season.
Colder weather brings with it more indoor time and it’s the perfect opportunity to help kids turn to books to while away the hours. Is there really anything better than tucking up under a doona with a great book in hand? We think not!
The key, of course, is to keep up a steady supply of reading options and to make reading a pleasurable option rather than a chore - something that can be particularly difficult in the middle of the year when school work might be piling up.
In episode 57 of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast, Megan and Allison shared some tips about making reading fun.
You can hear the full episode here, but here are five of their top tips.
Let them choose their own books. “Let them read what they want to read, not what you think they should read,” says Megan. “Around this time of year, I get a lot of parents very worried about what they would call ‘funny books’ and wanting to move their children along.
“But humorous books engage young people, particularly reluctant readers, because children are naturally playful. And those books are far from being an ‘easy’ option – they actually encourage critical thinking because children need to read between the lines and develop an awareness of subtlety and sarcasm and right and wrong.
“So I think it’s actually really important to put some of those books into the mix of what your child is reading.” More about ‘funny books’ here.
Make reading social. While curling up with a great book on your own is lovely, chatting about that book with friends amplifies the joy. Winter is a great time to establish a little book club with friends and neighbours at home, creating the opportunity to get together once a month for book chat and yummy snacks (Megan is very keen on the yummy snacks angle). Or perhaps to try it out in the school library if you’re an educator. Find out more about how to create your own book club here.
Walk the walk. If you want kids to believe that reading is fun, role model reading being fun. “Role modelling reading in all its various forms is a great way to engage kids,” says Megan. “Reading together, aloud, is great, but half of the battle is actually just us, as adults, choosing books over our phones and other devices. Even if you’re just sitting next to each other on the couch, reading separate things, that’s still reading together.”
Make sure there is a variety of books on hand. When you’re at a loose end, it’s all too easy to default to screens, which is why we encourage books ‘on hand’ at all times. Allison speaks regularly about ‘throwing books’ at her youngest son Book Boy Jr (now 17) to encourage reading, which in practise did not involve hefting paperbacks at him, but rather making sure there were always ‘possibly interesting’ books lying about the house.
Megan keeps books on the breakfast table, in the car, piled on bedside tables and tucked into corners on the off-chance one of her four kids fancies a story.
You can find out more about building a home library here, and remember that books can be collected and curated from a variety of sources, from school and public libraries (including ebooks), bookshops (new and second-hand), inter-friend borrowing and more.Ask for help. Not sure what kinds of books your kid might like? If your school has a teacher librarian, they should be your first port of call, along with the children’s specialist at your local public library and independent bookshop.
But this is also where the Your Kid’s Next Read community comes in! Join the group to ask for specific recommendations, or start by having a look at our very popular book lists here.
As a bonus, we’ve unlocked for this month only an incredible list of 60+ Books That 13-Year-Olds Are Loving, which was created last year for our paid subscribers. It’s not only a huge list of recommendations, but insights into why these books are popular.
UPDATES FROM TEAM YKNR
We’re rugged up for winter, and bracing ourselves for the busy months ahead because while it’s reading season, it’s also speaking season for authors. We’ll have more updates about events and activities over the coming months.
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. Her debut picture book THE BEEHIVE is out now! More about Megan here.
The last month has been a blur of moving house, unpacking and culling yet more books. Despite doing what I thought was a mighty cull of books before packing up the old house, as I unpacked books into the new house I knew more had to go.
I am very attached to my book collection but I am also not a re-reader of books so it makes sense to pass on books rather than have them linger on shelves. During this second cull, I have been only keeping books that are personally significant or those I use as reference books in my own writing or as an educator.
Cookbooks however? I have no ability to cull those and for now I have merely hidden the seven boxes of cookbooks to be dealt with when life is less chaotic!
I now have a study, which is set up and functioning thanks to dear friends who came when I was at work and worked like trojans to whip it into shape - even leaving me a vase of peonies on the desk. I have wonderful friends and a wonderful support crew.
So we're IN - after a nearly three year build we now have a house that is ours - The Beekeeper and I + our four kids are, like the last line of 'The Beehive' says 'settled at last'.
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.
‘This is MY Book’ by Tim Harris. Illustrated by Heidi McKinnon
It's page versus page in this hilarious story about what REALLY happens inside a book.
This is an utterly brilliant concept where the left and right pages of a book battle for supremacy, a battle which I feel like Tim Harris first started in his series ‘Exploding Endings’, but which he has now turned into a picture book.
And what a clever picture book it is – a mind bending, laugh-out-loud funny, interactive, brilliant example of text and images working in perfect harmony. This book ticks all the right boxes.
Heidi McKinnon’s illustrations of the left and right pages are full of personality. What she achieves with the shape of a mouth, pupil placement and the arch of an eyebrow is rather remarkable and a study in the importance of visual literacy.
The author and illustrator are also named and dragged into this book battle, with the pages talking straight to them and asking them to scrap a page and weigh down a page.
It’s interactive, so much fun and a complete delight.
‘The Unexpected Mess of it All’ by Gabrielle Tozer
A very funny and fraught 'enemies-to-will-they-won't-they' romance between family friends Jamila and Billy.
Jamila Dakhoul wants to escape her life.
Forget everything.
Forget that her only friends are strangers on the internet.
Forget that she's stuck in a caravan after a fire destroyed her family's house.
Forget that Year 12 is a brutal hellhole where bullying is an Olympic sport.
Forget Billy Radcliffe once and for all.
But as Jamila tries to untangle the messy threads of her life on a weekend away with her family, it becomes clear that she can't outrun her past, no matter how hard she tries ...
This YA book is just joy personified. I’ll preface this review by saying that I love Gabrielle Tozer’s work – I’ve loved her writing since The Intern. She’s got a light touch with everything she does, and right from chapter one I knew I was in a book that I needed to read right now. I roared through it and then passed it on to my 16 year old who’s in grade 11. Thoroughly enjoyable.
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 with me? A structural edit, that’s what. And this one is a real doozy, for I am moving back into the land of adult fiction, where I started out.
It is historical. It is large. It is like trying to put a very angry octopus into a sack. Many red frogs and cups of coffee will be required to complete this task. And you would not want to look at my browser history.
I have had to research the strangest bits and pieces for this book. From whether you can legally have an industrial waste incinerator in the New Forest (and what colours they come in), to the ins and outs of some not very nice diseases in the late 1700s. Fun times!
Pass the red frogs …
THREAD OF THE MONTH
Do you remember the childhood joy of toting around a massively thick book? I do. I wonder how many YKNReaders recall taking out that first book from the library that was undeniably heavier and thicker than any other book they’d borrowed before …
HELLO FROM ALLISON TAIT
Writing as A. L. Tait, Allison is the internationally published, bestselling author of three middle-grade series: The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. She is an in-demand speaker, a writing teacher for kids and adults, and co-host of the YKNR podcast. Her latest novel THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE is out now. More about Allison here.
I call snap on the editing because that’s what’s going on here as well. I typed The End on the first draft of my new middle-grade manuscript on schedule a week or two ago, and now, having let it ‘rest’, I’ve gone all the way back to the beginning to polish it like a diamond.
By the time we send the next newsletter, it will be with my publisher and, hopefully, all set for the next stage, which is, you guessed it, another edit…
In other news, I attended a leadlighting workshop last weekend as part of the research process for a new idea I have. It was a terrific experience, and you can see the highlights here on my Instagram reel.
GRAPHIC NOVELS 2.0
In episode 156, Megan and Allison revisited graphic novels, looking at the changing conversation around this area of the bookshelf since we first chatted about them way back in episode 3.
Then, much of the discussion about graphic novels from YKNR members was focused on ‘are graphic novels actual books, and should I let my kid read them’, but now, a few years down the track, graphic novels are an integral part of libraries, with new titles for all age groups coming out all the time, member discussion is more about ‘what to read next’.
Episode 156 is full of new recommendations, and we look at two particular age groups emerging as hot buttons.
JUNE BOOKMAIL WINNER
Each month, we give 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 SEVEN books in the JUNE prize pack.
The JUNE bookmail giveaway winner is … T Nuspahic.
Congrats! We’ll be in touch by email.
Want a chance to win next month? All you have to do is subscribe.
Here’s to reading!
We’ll see you in July with more bookish goodness. Our paid subscribers can expect all of Megan’s best tips for culling your home library collection (and packing it up if necessary) to land in their inboxes soon!
Allison T, Allison R and Megan
*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.