I love reading! I love writing! I love children’s books!
I’m Catherine, a British citizen living with my husband and ten year old daughter in Germany. As a parent and as a primary school teacher I read and enjoy lots of children’s books. However, as an expat I don’t often have the chance to visit bookshops selling English books so most of my browsing takes place in online bookstores, on publisher’s websites and on many wonderful book blogs.
Expat friends, new parents and my non native English speaking neighbours often ask me to recommend books that they can read with their children. My reason for setting up Story Snug, a blog devoted to recommending picture books and chapter books, was to help friends and family, near and far, become aware of books that may appeal to them. I choose stories that my family and I enjoy, stories that can stand up to repeated reading and stories which may also support a child educationally or emotionally.
The books are either from our own book collection and have been read repeatedly, both in the classroom and at home, or they are library copies which we read whilst visiting friends and family in the UK. I am also extremely grateful to the increasing number of publishers who send us books to read, often before publication date, and I wish that I had more time to blog about more of them.
If you would like to send books for recommendation please check out our recommendation policy.
I recommend books rather than review them so that my blog followers know that when a book is on Story Snug my family and I have personally read it and enjoyed it. Story Snug’s main critic is ten years old, if she likes a book it goes on the blog, if not then it doesn’t. The only exception to this is the books that are recommended on our author / illustrator guest posts. The age ranges on the posts are given as a guide, simple texts for younger children still appeal to my daughter but she also enjoys the more complex language of stories that may be written for older children.
Since starting the blog I have become more aware of how technology is changing our reading habits. I personally like to curl up with a book and I believe that it is an important experience for a child to hold a physical book in his / her hands so that is how we read books with our daughter. However, there are some amazing eBooks being published for the next generation of readers which I don’t want to ignore completely so we are happy to recommend the occasional eBook if it is linked to a story that we already know.
I also write my own picture books (currently unpublished) and I’m a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). I especially like to support other SCBWI members who have had books published and we try to read as many of their books as we can.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on an Amazon link in a post and buy anything I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. If it is at all possible (not so easy for expats I know!) I would also encourage you to support your local independent bookshop.
I hope that you will find this site useful and I look forward to reading your comments (I won’t share email addresses with any other parties). If you have a favourite book written by an author I have mentioned, it would be great if you could add the title in a comment for that post or pop over to our guestbook to say hi 🙂
Thank you and happy reading!
Catherine
Credits
- Concept & Realization: Michael Friess
- Logo design: Paul Turvill
- Runs on WordPress