Tag: Uncategorised
Win family tickets to the Paddington premiere!
Who doesn’t love Paddington? (Put your hand down, you at the back.) If you don’t have small children, you may have missed the news that he’s coming to the big screen very soon – 28th November to be precise. Want to see Paddington as you’ve never seen him before? (I’m always a bit nervous about…
Lostmy.name book giveaway
You may remember earlier in the year when I reviewed the rather wonderful Lostmy.name book, just about the time it was featured on Dragon’s Den. If not, I’ll recap briefly for you here. You order the book via the website, in a very simple process, where you put in the name of the lucky child…
Planning a Playmobil Christmas.
Yes, I’m sorry, I mentioned the C word. But the one thing that you kind of need to plan before December is your advent calendar, and once again, we’re going Playmobil style, in our role as Playologists. My children will be counting down to the festivities with the help of a whole bunch of Playmobil…
Following their interests (home education the lazy way)
There is a technique sometimes referenced in home education circles called strewing, in which you casually leave educational resources round and about to sucker entice your children into educating themselves. I like to think of myself as an extreme strewer. I’m not, of course. I’m just disastrously untidy 😉 But today it worked well in…
Fiction inspired food
From lashings of ginger beer (which apparently never actually existed) to midnight feasts including sardines, to enchanted hot chocolate, the books we read give us connections with food that we wouldn’t otherwise have had. The Queen took from somewhere among her wrappings a very small bottle which looked at if it were made of copper.…
Red House Children’s Book Award blog tour: Pamela Butchart
I’m very pleased today to be hosting a guest interview with Pamela Butchart, writer of Baby Aliens Got My Teacher, as part of the Red House Children’s Book Award blog tour. Over to Pamela. What inspired you to write Baby Aliens Got My Teacher? I had quite a wild imagination when I was at primary…
Sealed with a Christmas Kiss by Rachael Lucas #thesealquel
I am very proud to be able to call Rachael Lucas a friend. I was thrilled when her first book, Sealed with a Kiss was a self publishing success, and absolutely over the moon for her when she got a traditional publishing contract with Pan Macmillan. And now she’s back with a Christmas novella, Sealed…
Mars evacuees by Sophia McDougall
I was lucky enough recently to win a signed copy of Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall. It’s not just signed though, it’s doodled in. Isn’t this just fab? Amazon The fact that someone had decided I’d be safer on Mars, where you could still only SORT OF breathe the air and SORT OF not get…
From Skallagrigg to Wonder via Just Because, diverse disability books
There was a great twitter chat tonight on the #SupportWNDB tags, focussing on disability representation in fiction. It got me thinking of the books I could bring to mind featuring disability or illness. Buy at amazon (secondhand) An old favourite is the Skallagrigg. Unites Arthur, a little boy abandoned many years ago in a grim…
Meet Julia, the Bonikka doll.
We have a *lot* of dolls in this house. They pass in and out of favour, although some are more popular than others. And Tigerboy has never really clicked with any of them, until now. When I was offered the chance to review a Bonikka doll from Imajo toys, I confess that I assumed Smallest…
