It’s amazing that I’ve been blogging for 7 years! I had no idea when I started blogging that Story Snug would become such a wonderful and important part of my life but I love my blog and all the opportunities that it’s brought me.
It has introduced me and my family to some fabulous books, old and new, and I enjoy talking about books with so many lovely authors, illustrators and publishers, in real life and on social media.
Thank you
There are lots and lots of people that I would like to thank for supporting Story Snug.
The biggest THANK YOUs go to my husband, who is the technical wizard behind Story Snug, and our daughter, who is an avid reader in both German and English.
A huge THANK YOU to all of Story Snug’s followers and to all of you who leave such lovely comments on the blogposts. Your visits and comments are very much appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to visit 🙂
THANK YOU to my followers on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Bloglovin’ and to everybody who shares our blogposts on social media and takes part in our giveaways.
THANK YOU to all of the authors and illustrators who have written guest posts for Story Snug and very generously provided copies of books for us to give away. Thank you for answering our interview questions and for giving us a fantastic insight into your work and creative processes.
THANK YOU to all the publishers and PR representatives who invite us on blog tours and send us fantastic books to read and recommend. We are truly grateful to you and only wish we had the time to write about every single book that we love.
THANK YOU to my SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) friends who inspired me to create Story Snug and who continue to support me with my own picture book writing.
THANK YOU to the blogging community for supporting Story Snug, particularly to our special book blogging friends who are listed on the blogroll. Please check out their great blogs, there are so many different styles and such wonderful content to enjoy.
Picture books
We still read lots of picture books and often go back and reread old favourites. Some of the stories that we most enjoyed reading over this last year include Vera Jewel is Late for School, The Golden Acorn, The Sea Saw, The Tide, Raj and the Best Holiday Ever!, Just Read, The Girls, the winner of the 2018 Lollies Picture Book Award, Mr Bunny’s Chocolate Factory. We also blogged about a longtime favourite, CLICK, CLACK, MOO Cows That Type, and a childhood favourite of mine which we recently found in a UK bookshop – The Giant Jam Sandwich.
There are some amazing books for toddlers and pre-schoolers which encourage them to enjoy books from an early age. Some of our favourites this year included Go, Go, Pirate Boat, Alphabet Street, with its fabulous play frieze, and A QUIET QUIET HOUSE. Pip and Posy Jigsaw Building Blocks are a lot of fun to play with too!
We enjoyed Stripes new colour fiction books, The Missing Bookshop and Little Rabbit’s Big Surprise, and we loved Jonny Duddle’s newest pirate adventure, The Jolley-Rogers and the Pirate Piper. We also read some fabulous chapter books including the heartwarming and thought provoking No Ballet Shoes in Syria, Julie Pike’s debut novel, The Last Spell Breather, and the futuristic The Last Human. We also reviewed our first Jacqueline Wilson book, Wave Me Goodbye.
Non fiction
We read some great non fiction this year too and learnt about recycling and helping our environment in A Planet Full of Plastic and endangered species in Survival. Balloon to the Moon and The Spacesuit were great reads to celebrate 50 years of the moonwalk and gave us interesting insights into the history of the event. We were introduced to British explorer in The Daring Story of Isabella Bird by author Lori Mortensen and Esther Coombs’ Plant, Sow, Make & Grow gave us a brilliant introduction to gardening.
Blogtours and guest authors / illustrators
We’ve taken part in several blog tours including Catherine Bruton’s No Ballet Shoes in Syria, David Solomon’s My Cousin is a Time Traveller and Elizabeth Dale’s Save the Day for Ada May!. Jim Smith also joined us to talk about Barry Loser as part of the 2018 #Lollies blogtour.
We also welcomed authors Lari Don, Lauren Wohl, Deborah Fajerman, Julie Ballard and illustrator Francesca Gambatesa who wrote blogposts about their favourite books, creative processes, their inspiration and illustrations.
One of our favourite books last Christmas was an Advent story by Alex T. Smith.
We thoroughly enjoyed reading How Winston Delivered Christmas, it’s a real page turner and it was very hard to read just one chapter a night! We’ll definitely be reading it again this December too!
You can see all of Story Snug’s posts on our Pinterest Board.
It’s unbelievable that I’m just starting my 8th year of blogging, something that I never imagined when I started Story Snug. Thank you again to all of you for your support and we look forward to reading and recommending lots more wonderful books over the next year!
Happy 7th Birthday Story Snug!
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