I can’t believe that Story Snug is 8 years old today!
It’s been a funny old year, for obvious reasons, and blogging took a bit of a back seat due to other demands on my time. But every cloud has a silver lining and we’ve had a lot more time to read 🙂
We’ve read lots of wonderful books, old and new, including a wide range of picture books – fiction and non fiction, chapter books and middle grade. There are far more books than I have time to blog about (sadly) – there are so many wonderful children’s books to choose from.
There are so many people that I would like to thank for supporting Story Snug!
THANK YOU to my husband, who deals with the technical side of Story Snug, and our daughter, who is a real book worm! This year’s lockdown gave her lots of time to enjoy several classic novels like Ballet Shoes as well as more contemporary fiction and picture books.
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 visiting!
And THANK YOU to the blogging community for supporting Story Snug and especially to our special book blogging friends who are listed on the blogroll.
A big THANK YOU to my followers on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest and to everybody who shares our blogposts on social media and takes part in our giveaways.
THANK YOU to all the publishers and PR representatives who 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 one of those that we love.
Special THANK YOUs to all the authors and illustrators who have written guest posts for Story Snug and have very generously provided copies of their 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 also to those of you who have invited us to be part of your blog tours.
Blog tours
We’ve taken part in several blog tours for very different books. Lari Don wrote a fabulous guest post about The Power of The Story for her Fierce, Fearless and Free blog tour and Caryl Hart wrote a post about the inspiration for her new preschool series Mini Monsters Can I Play?. Jane Hissey told us The Story of Old Bear’s friends for her Little Bear and The Silver Star blog tour and H. S. Norup told us about her experiences in Singapore for her The Hungry Ghost blog tour.
Author / illustrator Polly Dunbar chose her five favourite picture books as part of her While We Can’t Hug blogtour. While We Can’t Hug is a wonderful story about showing affection that doesn’t involve hugs. You can watch a video of the story on You Tube;
Guest authors / illustrators
It’s always really interesting to interview authors and illustrators about their books. H. S. Norup joined us to talk about her middle grade novel, The Missing Barbegazi and Lori Degman talked about the inspiration for her non fiction picture book Like A Girl. Natascha Biebow, author of The Crayon Man, also joined us to talk about ‘Why Reading Non-Fiction Books is the Bees’ Knees!’.
I was extremely excited when Clare Helen Welsh asked me to reveal the cover of her new picture book, How Selfish! illustrated by Olivier Tallec.
It was also great to be involved in revealing the International Book Giving Day logo by author / illustrator Sanne Dufft as well as being involved in the lead up to the event on February 14th. International Book Giving Day is a fantastic initiative that aims to put a book in the hands of as many children as possible worldwide.
Picture books
We still love picture books and the stories that we really enjoyed reading over the last year include I Don’t Like Books. Never. Ever. The End., The Perfect Shelter, Captain Sparklebeard, The Perfect Birthday Recipe, THE TREE THAT’S MEANT TO BE and Christmas comes to Moominvalley.
Chapter books
We enjoyed a variety of early chapter books including Sona Sharma Very Best Big Sister which introduced us to Indian culture and traditions, Clara Vulliamy’s latest character Marshmallow Pie the Cat Superstar makes us laugh and A Bear named Bjorn which has been translated from its original French.
Middle grade books
Thank you to the publishers who sent us some fantastic middle grade this year. We particularly loved the mysteries in The House of Hidden Wonders and The Highland Falcon Thief and were captivated by the mysterious Shadows of Winterspell.
Cooking
During lockdown we spent a lot of time in the kitchen and Chef Junior 100 Super Delicious Recipes by Kids for Kids! and KIDS CAN COOK Fun and yummy recipes for budding chefs by Esther Coombs introduced us to basic cooking and baking skills and lots of easy but delicious recipes 🙂
Advent Calendar
I had fun with our Story Snug Advent Calendar last year, Every day during December we posted part of the front cover or an image or character from a Christmas book for readers to identify, it was so much fun choosing books and images, I could have written lots more than twenty four blogposts!
Most viewed posts
The five most viewed blogposts on Story Snug over the last eight years are still books that are old favourites. Learning with Elmer, Learning with Eric Carle and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Funnybones, Learning With Room on the Broom and On The Way Home. Interestingly they are all picture books by author / illustrators and are books which I have used regularly in the classroom to support children’s learning.
You can see most of Story Snug’s posts on our Pinterest Board which was started much later than Story Snug so there are still a few missing!
I would also like to say a big 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 picture book writing. Thank you to the authors and illustrators who have given me so much encouragement for my own writing including author Amy Sparkes who chose me as her mentee and is currently helping me to get my picture books ready to send out on submission.
I still find it unbelievable that I have been blogging for 8 years, something that I had never even considered when I started Story Snug! Thank you again to all of you for your support and I look forward to seeing what the next year of blogging will bring!
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