SJ Wills’s Bite Risk! Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones!! Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Lin. Inkbound by Philippa Leathley. Sue Lynn Tan’s epic fantasy romances. Danielle Jawando’s YA books. So many. #kidlituk #kidsbooksfriday
Have the best time!! xx
ALT text: doodles with the words World Book Day, read what you love!, read in any format you want, comics = reading, and a robot doodle saying I love sci fi
Happy World Book Day! Celebrating with a fun little doodle from Anaya (age 10). The message: read whatever you love in whatever format you want! 📖 🎧 ✨ 🎉 It’s ALL reading. #kidlit #worldbookday
Yes! Every week! So proud to have been a part of this.
👀
We’re really excited about our latest AI model that can parent your children, make love to your wife and experience all of human joy for you, while you just stare at your phone or something. Isn’t that better than living your life?
Yes! I used to push and overdo it (scrambling to find the answers for someone when I have no energy for it) but now I am older and wiser and say sorry today I just can’t so I’ll ask for help instead. GROWTH.
I’ve been hoping Maisie Chan would do an Author’s Live for ages. So excited for this!
Open to all schools in the UK. Get your classes registered folks. It’s going to be another brilliant one.
#KidLitUK #UKKidLit #EduSky
Deep in deadlines so of course books have all fallen out of my brain. I’ve reposted and asked for you!
Children’s book people - any suggestions for stories with great friendships (with Stargazing vibes)? #kidlit #childrensbooks
Another lovely feature for #poemsontheunderground
40th anniversary
If there’s a poem you loved, you can buy the poster from @poetrysociety.org.uk
here:
poetrysociety.org.uk/projects/poe...
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/b...
#poetrysky #ukpoets
So much chat about business rates for pubs. So little chat about business rates for independent bookshops who do so much for their local communities.
If any tech people do happen to have the ears of billionaires, I am here with my wallet open saying I would pay EXTRA for devices and software that don't have AI in them. Please take my money.
Author Rashmi Sirdeshpande and illustrator Diane Ewen
Photo of the cover of Never Show a T-Rex a Book
First spread of Never Show a T-Rex a Book
Jumping on this trend with a little twist:
🌟 the author and illustrator ✍️ 🎨
🌟 front cover 👀 📖
🌟 first page 🦖
Never Show a T-Rex a Book by Diane Ewen and me - it’s all about falling in love with ALL KINDS of books, following your interests and going all in. VERY National Year of Reading. 👀
Extraordinary.
My #GoodNewsFriday is we finally have a website for the charity! libraries-kids. It’s in the title #KidsNeedLibraries raising money to provide book grants 📚 so schools can spend on what their kids would love to have. Thx to Thinktech systems for the site!
Those two recent ones were Nakul P (nakulp dot art on IG) and Mamta Singh (artistmamtasingh on IG). Mamta actually wasn’t even in the children’s book space. She’s a muralist in India but she said yes to illustrating a series and she’s amazing.
IG and, surprisingly, LinkedIn. I get most engagement on IG but constantly finding a good visual is tricky. I miss text-based social media. Authors I know seem to love it here on Bluesky but I don’t really know what I’m doing.
Yes, it still happens. Two of the debut illustrators I’ve been paired with were discovered on IG a year ago and 2 years ago.
Jumping in here but I’ve now worked with four (brilliant!) debut illustrators that Puffin and HarperCollins found on Instagram.
More fantastic whole school picture book picks: The Artist by Ed Vere, Granny Came Here on the Empire Windrush by Patrice Lawrence and Camilla Sucre, To The Other Side by Erika Meza, The Spots and the Dots by Helen Baugh and Marion Deuchars. #KidsBooksFriday #kidlituk
My picture book with Diane Ewen, Never Show a T-Rex a Book, is a joyous love letter to libraries, reading and ambition and is often used in whole school assemblies. More recs below! #Kidsbooksfriday #kidlituk
Hey Fellow Youth #Library folk Pen & Inc is a great read! Be sure to take look! 📚📜
Photo of author Rashmi Sirdeshpande behind a stack of comics: The Investigators by John Patrick Green Unicorn Boy by Dave Roman Dadbot by Jack Noel Happy Hills by Sophy Henn Agent Moose by Mo O’Hara and Jess Bradley Donut Squad by Neill Cameron Mexikid by Pedro Martín Stargazing by Jen Wang
Continuing my list of children’s reading recommendations for the National Year of Reading. This time, we’re zooming in on comics. Just a few faves here and most are series. Titles and creators in the ALT text. #kidlit #kidscomics
Visual assets sharing announcement on social media. Text against a cream background. At bottom are 3 partial balloon shapes in red, orange & blue with the Little Rebels Award logo in bottom right corner. Text reads: An Announcement The Little Rebels Award will be taking a pause in 2026. We have been proudly celebrating radical fiction for children since 2013, and in that time we've seen the prize grow and grow. Such is its success that the work the prize generates now exceeds the capacity of the small team running it. Like so many endeavours in the book world, the award runs mostly on love, enthusiasm and unpaid labour, and we've temporarily reached a point where the workload is unsustainable. We are incredibly grateful for the funding we receive from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, which goes to the prize money, promotional materials and the ceremony, but we have no funding beyond this, and our hope this year is to find additional funding opportunities to help us pay for administrative support. We would welcome any ideas or suggestions in this respect!✊🏿
Text continued on to next image (same design): We will continue to run our social media accounts throughout 2026, and we will be highlighting children’s titles published in 2025 which might otherwise have been amplified by a longlist - so do continue to follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to stay up to date. This was a really difficult decision, but we hope this pause will allow us to regroup and come back with a bang in 2027. Thank you to all our friends and followers for supporting the prize all these years and helping us to celebrate socially and politically engaged storytelling for children! We will see you soon. - The Little Rebels Team x
📣Little Rebels Award Folk!
An Announcement:
Award organisers @letterboxlibrary.bsky.social & @housmansbookshop.bsky.social are pausing the Little Rebels Award for Radical Fiction this year.
Full announcement below.
#KidLitUK
Cover of Hari Kumar Ultimate Superstar Going for Gold
Turns out kids are ALREADY asking for Hari Book 2. Last week, one heard me mention it and the news rippled down the signing queue! So here it is: HARI KUMAR, ULTIMATE SUPERSTAR - GOING FOR GOLD. Out 13th August. Art by Mamta Singh, design by Elorine Grant and Kate Clarke. 🎉🌟
I would like to express something in no uncertain terms about the publishing industry re availability and I would really like this carved in stone. Carers and chronically ill writers are structurally disadvantaged in prestige economies. This is brutal and rarely said out loud. I need more support
Thank you so much. I’d love to!
We’re starting to see more of this but not nearly enough given the appetite for it all!
An excellent series for anyone interested in how we get children reading for pleasure. I have lots to catch up on but I had to give it a boost! #kidlituk #ukkidlit
