Would you like to win a $100 book voucher?
We're celebrating six years of Your Kid's Next Read
We can hardly believe it, but the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community is now six years old! As noted under-celebrators of such milestones, we dithered about for a while (okay, a month) working out how to mark the occasion, but in the end decided on… a survey.
They don’t call us Cool Kids for nothing (or at all, for that matter).
Seriously, though, we wanted to take the opportunity to get to know you better. To find out what you love about Your Kid’s Next Read – the community, the podcast, the newsletter – and what you’d like to see more of.
So we’ve put together this short survey to find out.
It’s just 12 questions and will take only a few minutes of your time – but we know your time is valuable.
Which is why we’re offering you the chance to win a $100AUD voucher to buy books!
Everyone who completes the survey will have the chance to win the book voucher (*find all the T&Cs below), and the winner can choose to receive a voucher to their local bookshop of choice, or their favourite online bookseller.
We know our community is international and we want to give everyone a chance to win! Good luck – we’re looking forward to hearing from you!
UPDATES FROM TEAM YKNR
What do you get when you get a bunch of teacher-librarians and some authors in a room? Truly terrible selfies…
You also get a lot of great discussion about ‘reaching reluctant readers’, which was theme for the first Shoalhaven Teacher-Librarian Conference. Allison T and Megan gave a keynote speech on the subject, with Allison in the room and Megan on Zoom, and other speakers included Sue Whiting (pictured above with Allison and organiser Emily Williams), who gave a wonderful presentation on the power of stories.
Thanks for having us!
Bonus posts
ICYMI, we’ve added a paid subscription option for the YKNR substack.
Our monthly newsletter will ALWAYS remain free, but you can choose to upgrade to a paid subscription to access and receive bonus posts and resources.
There are currently three new posts for paid subscribers available and, for a short time, you can access a seven-day free trial to see what’s on offer.
Top 10 Tips for Reaching Reluctant Readers
Megan’s top tips for reading a picture book out loud
A story is like a jigsaw puzzle – 5 tips for young writers
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.
I’m currently deep in the edits of a very large, very unwieldy manuscript. The kind of edits that see me waking up at 3am and scrambling to scribble down the swirling thoughts in my head.
I have a notebook that lives on my bedside table for just these sort of 3am moments. Notes duly scribbled, I then go back to sleep only to awaken at a more decent hour in which I have to attempt to read these scribbles.
They generally say something along the lines of ‘the necklace’, or ‘HAIR’, or ‘monkeys on horseback!’ and are of no use to me whatsoever. But 3am me knew exactly what it meant and it was THE BEST IDEA EVER!
The solution? More time combing through the manuscript and lots of red frogs.
ALLISON R’S YKNR COMMUNITY THREAD OF THE MONTH
I just loved this thread about non-fiction books about dragons, because, yes, yes, we all know dragons are not real, but we are all also super-busy and just want to find that dragon book we need fast, you know?
Here at YKNR, we have your back. We know what you mean even when you don’t know what you mean! We’re good like that.
I’m going to get myself a reference book about dragons. Because that sounds like a good read.
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 forthcoming anthology ‘Teacher, Teacher’. More about Megan here.
The last few weeks have been a bit of blur to be honest! Covid, influenza and then gastro (just to top it off) have ripped through our family and the extended family and it's really just been a lot of washing, cleaning and making of honey and lemon drinks for everyone! Somehow I escaped all the illness and just ended up with the washing!
In all spare moments I've been working on the final, final copy edits of 'Teacher, Teacher' (Affirm Press, August 2023) and 'The Beehive' (Walker Books, February 2024). It is rather terrifying to imagine a book with your name on the cover having errors so these final copy edits really are it!
Surprisingly the picture book has been a lot more difficult to wrangle. I can't really work this out except that I think that the less words there is on the page, the more you focus on them? It's been a process! I'm really looking forward to both these books coming out - I never, ever imagined I would one day have my name on three books. Life is funny old thing isn't it?
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.
‘Pepper Masalah and the Flying Carpet’ by Rosanne Hawke. Illustrated byJasmine Berry.
This is a great new series for readers 6-9 years as an independent or bedtime read. Full of mystery, adventure and travel with themes of family, belonging, fairness and animals. It’s also great for animal lovers and for anyone who ever read and love the Tashi series.
The main characters are a black cat called Pepper Masalah, a nine-year-old boy called Zamir and a flying carpet.
Pepper Masalah lives with Zamir and his family on an olive farm in Australia. Zamir’s grandmother is from the old country (Kashmir) and when coming to Australia she brought with her an ancient carpet.
Rosanne Hawke blends culture, legend, and history throughout all her stories, so this book is a great introduction to to her work.
The second book will be out in July: ‘Pepper Masalah and the Temple of Cats’
‘Duckling Runs Away’ by Margaret Wild, illustrated by Vivienne To
This one is just *perfect* for toddlers to preppies – this age group seems to have a tendency to run away when they are cranky, sad, hungry or hangry!
Duckling is running away and she's never, ever coming back! Or is she?
Luckily, no matter how far Duckling roams, a mother's love is always near.
Duckling has decided she’s definitely going to run away and is never coming back! She runs past the chicks, puppies and piglets and repeats the refrain ‘I’m running away!’.
Illustrations by To are just gorgeous. Soft, textured and lots of fun but also a nice use of light and dark to illustrate the sun setting and night time coming.
This is as much a story about feeling safe and secure as is it a reminder to allow young children independence and room to explore.
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. More about Allison here.
I’ve sent the final, proofread pages of THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE back to my publisher and the book is off to print. This is exciting and terrifying in equal measure – exciting, because the next time I see Callie, she’ll be in a fully fledged book, but terrifying because there’s no more time to make changes.
All writers know that a novel will never be perfect, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t tinker with it forever given a choice. It’s probably a good thing that publishing takes the choice out of our hands!
ON THE PODCAST
We’ve been lucky enough to interview some amazing authors in recent episodes. Our interviews are short – technically 10 minutes, but… well, they’re known to be longer. But we pack a lot into the time we have.
Authors are very generous with their knowledge and each of our interviews contains insights into their writing process, tips for writers of all ages, surprisingly (for the time we have) in-depth discussions about various aspects of children’s publishing and reading, and a recommendation of each author’s fave recent read for kids.
These are some of the highlights this year – you’ll find them all at yourkidsnextread.com or where you get your podcasts.
JUNE 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 subscriber list by random draw and announced here!
There are SIX books in the June prize pack.
The JUNE bookmail giveaway winner is … K Smith, Vic.
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.
Thanks for being part of our community! T&Cs for the survey/book voucher comp are below.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Allison, Allison & Megan