Tips for home
Culling your home library collection
If you’ve been listening to the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast, you’ll know that Megan Daley recently moved house. Actually, it felt as though she was moving house for about two years, but that’s another story. In this article, Megan shares her top tips for culling a home library collection, and for packing up your precious books for moving.
It's reading season
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 tuc…
The Magic of Wordless Picture Books
I began my teaching career as an early childhood teacher and discovered the power of wordless picture books very early on. The freedom to interpret and narrate these visual stories sparked endless creativity and engagement among my Year Two students, and my collection of wordless picture books began in earnest.
Why holiday reading matters
The dust has settled on the YKNR Teens & Reading event, but the takeaways linger on. Our special guest Dr Bronwyn Reddan from Deakin University gave us so many great insights into how, where and when teens are reading (and how, when and why they’re not), but one clear message came through – time is a big issues for teens when it comes to reading, and sc…
The who, what and how of teen reading
“My teen has stopped reading.” “How can I get my 13 year old to read more?” “My 14-year-old son has lost interest in books.” These questions, and hundreds more like them, turn up in some form or another several times a week in the Your Kid’s Next Read community.
Diversity in book collections
Diversity in children’s literature has been a hot topic in recent months and, with Harmony Week taking place this month (18-24 March, 2024), it’s a good time to think about the range of stories on offer in our home and school libraries. A good starting point might be
How many books will you read this year?
Never let it be said that the #qualitywaffle on the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast doesn’t bear fruit! In episode 140, Megan and Allison shared their best tips for setting up for a great reading year at home or at school, including this one: Megan mentioned that she was planning to create a visual reading record – printed larger size for her kids to use at…
Get ready for a great reading year
Regular listeners of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast will know that Megan and Allison kicked off 2024 with an episode dedicated to setting up a reading culture at your place. (You can hear the full episode here.) Allison promised a summary of the tips in that episode for newsletter subscribers, and here they are!
Our favourite reads of 2023
TeamYKNR would like to wish all of our subscribers a very happy (and very peaceful) festive break! 2023 has been a (long and) productive year for us – between us we’ve: •published nine books, •spoken at countless events, •participated in key industry research,
How do readers grow into writers?
Have you ever wondered what it is that turns a reader into a writer? How do authors go from consuming stories (at frantic pace, in many cases) to creating our own for others to read? It’s a question I often think about, so I decided to find out by asking a range of Australia’s best children’s authors to think about the building blocks of their journey into writing.
The best kid's book series you've never read
Is there a children’s book series that you love – but which no-one else ever seems to have heard of? Something that you think should get way MORE attention than it does? For Megan Daley and Allison Tait, it’s the Miss Penny Dreadful series by the third member of #TeamYKNR, Allison Rushby.
Bonus: The inside story on school readers
There’s a certain pattern to the questions that are asked in the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community – to the point where, after six years, the YKNR Team can almost set our watches by some of the queries. This pattern is where the BINGO questions for the
30 Holiday Reading Ideas
The school holidays are upon us again and it’s time to put the fun back into reading! Keeping kids in touch with books (and off screens…) over the break need not be a battleground. Instead, it’s about looking for book-related activities that keep reading top of mind.
10 tips for reaching reluctant readers
If you’ve listened to the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast, you’ll know that we have a segment called the Bingo Question. Bingo questions are the questions that come up over and over in our Facebook community – the kinds of questions we could rely on if we were ever to create a Bingo card.