What is Your Kid's Next Read?
The idea that became a community, a podcast and more
In the beginning…
Your Kid’s Next Read grew, as so many things do, from a need, followed by a conversation between friends.
Before I was a children’s author, I (Allison Tait) was a freelance writer raising two boys – one a voracious, advanced reader, one a kid who’d rather run than read. I spent a lot of time chasing librarians, teachers, other parents and booksellers, looking for the next good book to engage her young readers.
Fortunately for me, as my children’s author career grew, it brought me into contact with my now-dear-friend Megan Daley. I call her a celebrity teacher-librarian, but Megan is more than that - she’s a force of nature, a true and passionate advocate for Australian books, and an author herself (find out more below).
When I found myself on the end of many, many requests for help to find the ‘next great read’ for friends, family and via random email, I knew something needed to be done.
“We should create a Facebook group for this,” I mused to Megan one day.
”Okay,” said Megan.
And so the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community was born – and quickly grew to the point where we needed to bring in another safe pair of hands to help moderate and manage the group.
Enter Australian author Allison Rushby.
Today, the group has 36,000+ members – parents, friends, teachers, booksellers, authors, publishers, bloggers, reviewers, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other interested parties – all interested in one thing: getting and keeping the kids in their lives reading.
Your Kid’s Next Read is also a weekly podcast, where Megan and I look at what’s new in Australian publishing and what’s coming up, as well as sharing recommendation, tips for readers and writers and what’s become known as ‘quality waffle’ - the good, the bad and the very funny of our lives as authors, teachers, speakers, parents, and more.
Your Kid’s Next Read operates under the ethos that there is always a terrific ‘next read’ for every young reader - from those who love reading to those who need more encouragement. The challenging part is finding it.
With the Your Kid’s Next Read community on your side, you’re likely to have too MANY choices rather than too few.
So why a newsletter?
If you’re reading this, you’re reading the very first Your Kid’s Next Read newsletter.
Once a month, we’ll be distilling the very best of the YKNR community. You’ll get Megan’s best book reviews, the best of the conversations in the group, an overview of what we’re talking about in the podcast.
You’ll also get to hear directly from each member of #TeamYKNR about what we’re up to, insights into our writing and other aspects of our careers, tips from Megan for teacher-librarians, tips from Allison for young writers, what we’re reading and more.
Plus, your chance to win books in our big bookmail giveaway each month.
Why are we adding a newsletter?
Because a group with 36,000+ members is the size of a small town, and it’s easy to miss things.
This newsletter will keep you up to date with what’s going on.
Like the town crier in the town square, we’ll tell you about events, great discussions, book news, giveaways, podcast episodes you might have missed, author interviews and more.
And the joy of it is that you don’t even need to be a current YKNR member to get the best from it. Just subscribe here!
What to expect
The newsletter will be monthly and is free. We are looking at adding premium content down the track for paid subscribers, but we’ll keep you posted on that.
See above for what to expect on the content front, though we’ll move things around depending on the month.
Meet the team
ALLISON RUSHBY (left, in pink) is the award-winning, bestselling author of many, many books for children and adults. Her middle-grade novels are firm favourites in the Your Kid’s Next Read community, particularly The Turnkey series and The Ghost Locket, and her early reader series The Wish Sisters are firm favourites in the YKNR community.
Currently working on: a novel for adults!
MEGAN DALEY (middle) 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 the 2023 curator for Word Play for Brisbane Writers Festival. Her debut picture book ‘The Beehive’ was published in 2023.
Currently working on: Megan is currently editing a project.
ALLISON TAIT (right) writing as A. L. Tait, 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 former co-host of the So You Want To Be A Writer podcast. Her latest novel ‘The First Summer of Callie McGee’ was longlisted for the 2024 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award.
Currently working on: Allison’s next middle-grade novel will be published in May 2024 through Scholastic Australia. Stay tuned for updates!
Each member of the team brings their expertise to everything we do, and our newsletter will be no different!
Top 10 podcast episodes in 2022
We’ll finish up this month with a recap of our top 10 YKNR podcast episodes in 2022, in descending order (click the link to go directly to the episode on Apple Podcasts or find it wherever you get your pods).
#66: Secrets of a School Librarian
#64: Let’s talk about takeaway fiction
#01: What to read after Harry Potter?
#21: Books about books
#68: Biographies for kids
#63: Why should I read?
#34: Starting high school
#36: Should I teach my kid to read - and how?
#67: 10 Minutes with Melanie La’Brooy
This was the year we moved to ‘grown up’ hosting and the year we added our super-popular ‘10 minutes with…’ author interviews segment.
We’re currently in the middle of our Summer Snacks series, bite-sized snippets of authorly goodness to keep you immersed in books over the Aussie summer. If you haven’t listened to us before, they’ll give you a taste of what we’re about.
Okay, that’s it from us for now.
We’ll be back in February with news, reviews, interviews and the first of our Big Bookmail Giveaways*.
See you then!
Allison T, Allison R and Megan
*giveaways mailed to Australian addresses only