I can’t believe that I’m celebrating 10 years of blogging! Over the last ten years we’ve read hundreds of wonderful books, old and new, including a variety of picture books, fiction and non fiction, chapter books and middle grade.
Happy 10th birthday Story Snug!
Thanks to the generosity of publishers around the world my daughter and I have read so many books that we wouldn’t have known about or considered reading. I would love to blog about so many more books but sadly there’s just not enough time to shout out about every wonderful book that we read.
I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to my SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) friends who inspired me to create Story Snug at my very first SCBWI meeting. Their advice was to build up a social media presence to support my own writing but I never imagined that I would still be blogging ten years later – it’s just been so much fun!
The very first blog post was a picture book that I still love Where’s the Bus? by Eileen Browne and James Croft.
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.
I always enjoy looking over the previous year’s blogposts and have had a lot of fun rereading blogposts and remembering the books that we have read since Story Snug’s 9th birthday.
PICTURE BOOKS
Picture books that we enjoyed reading over the last year include Old Friends by Margaret Aitken and Lenny Wen, All Aboard the London Bus by Patricia Toht and Sam Usher, SUPERHEROES DON’T GET SCARED by Kate Thompson and Clare Elsom, The River by Tom Percival, How Messy! by Clare Helen Welsh and Olivier Tallec, Every Bunny is a Yoga Bunny by Emily Davison and Deborah Allbright, Saving The Butterfly by Helen Cooper and Gill Smith, Anyone But Bear by Suzy Senior and Dubravka Kolanovic, Wide Awake Wolf by Georgina Deutsch and Megan Tadden and Home Is Where The Heart Is by Jonny Lambert.
CHAPTER BOOKS
We’ve also enjoyed a variety of early chapter books including Clementine Florentine by Tasha Harrison and Mya Mitchell, How Winston Came Home For Christmas by Alex T. Smith, Diary of an Accidental Witch by Perdita Cargill, Honor Cargill and Katie Saunders and Autumn Moonbeam Dance Magic! by Emma Finlayson-Palmer and Heidi Cannon.
MIDDLE GRADE
Due to time constraints I rarely blog about middle grade novels. But we have read several this year including The Very Merry Murder Club, a compilation of Christmas stories edited by Serena Patel and Robin Stevens.
NON FICTION
We did a lot more cooking and baking this year thanks to these fabulous recipe books – Green Kids Cook by Jenny Chandler, Kids Can Bake and Kids Can Cook Vegetarian by Esther Coombs.
We enjoyed reading Dodos ARE NOT EXTINCT by Paddy Donnelly and Time to Move South for Winter by Clare Helen Welsh and Jenny Lovlie. Both are fabulous non fiction picture books which promote learning in a fun way. We also love these activity books, Kitchen Science 30 Awesome STEM Experiments To Try At Home and Christmas Craft Book by Laura Minter and Tia Williams.
I would like to say a huge thank you to all the authors and illustrators who have written guest posts for Story Snug. Thank you for answering our interview questions and for giving us a fantastic insight into your work and creative processes. I’d also like to thank those of you who have invited us to be part of your blog tours.
BLOGTOURS and AUTHOR GUEST POSTS
We were delighted to host several authors and illustrators who wrote fabulous posts for their blogtours. John Condon chose five of his favourite picture book bears for his the best BEAR TRACKER blogtour, Cath Jones talked about slugs on her Slug Love blogtour, Beatrix Hatcher showed us how she created main character Hopp, in the I am NOT a Prince! blogtour, Katie Sahota and illustrator Harry Woodgate answered questions about writing and illustrating Little Glow and Michelle Nott talked about her debut picture book, Teddy, let’s Go!
We love hearing authors and illustrators talk about the inspiration for their books. It was interesting to hear Kate Foster, author of middle grade novel, Paws, and Maudie Smith, author of My Must-Have Mum, answer questions about their books and writing processes. We also enjoyed reading Donna Cangelosi’s fabulous post about the non fiction picture books that inspired her while writing Mister Rogers Gift of Music.
MOST VIEWED POSTS OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS
The five most viewed blogposts on Story Snug over the last ten years are all classic picture books that many of us read as children – Learning with Elmer, Learning with Eric Carle and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Funnybones, Learning With Room on the Broom and How To Catch a Star. We had such fun doing the activities for the Learning With… posts. Sadly David McKee passed away this year as did two other talented picture book authors and illustrators – Shirley Hughes and Raymond Briggs.
Thank you
There are LOTS of people that I would like to thank for supporting Story Snug!
A huge huge THANK YOU to my husband, who is Story Snug’s technical wizard, and to our daughter, who has always been an avid bookworm!
A huge THANK YOU to all of Story Snug’s followers and especially to all of you who leave such lovely comments on the blogposts. Your visits and comments are very much appreciated. Thank you!
And THANK YOU to the blogging community for supporting Story Snug and especially to our special book blogging friends who are listed on our blogroll.
A big THANK YOU to my followers on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest and to everybody who shares our blogposts on social media.
A huge thank you to my SCBWI, Write Mentor and Write Magic friends for their continued support with my own writing. And thank you to the authors and illustrators who have also encouraged me.
I still find it unbelievable that I’ve been blogging for 10 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!
You can see all of Story Snug’s blogposts on Pinterest…
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