Kate Hitchings

Announcing the longlist for the #Carnegies2026 Medal for Illustration!🏅🎨

Featuring lively colours and immersive mediums, these 19 works beautifully portray themes of identity, relationships, nature, and life’s journey. 📚🌟

https://carnegies.co.uk/2026-longlists-announced/

This term, we’re starting with this stunning anthology of female WW1 poets which caught someone’s eye. Here are two of the poems that students brought along to discuss this week - both so moving, and allowing for rich connections to more well-known poems by Owen and others.

Chapter books of the month: adventurers assemble Young heroes travel through time, battle natural disasters and resist the Nazis in our middle-years roundup

Super pleased that When the World Ends (out 5th Feb!) is already a Chapter Book of the Month for @theobserveruk.bsky.social Plus rather delightful to be called ‘fantastic’… observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Never heard of this but it looks fabulous and has won big prizes!

Top shelf even though I’ve read a couple of them already - both top reads of 2025 though!

The Bertvent books

Giveaway!

I’m giving one lucky person the chance to pick one shelf of books from our Bertvent bookcase.

Follow and repost by midday on Saturday 27th and I’ll pick someone at random! Which shelf will you choose?

(UK only)

Just coming to the end of this - Noughts and Crosses chapter - and it’s been an absolute delight!

Great collection! Loved Becoming Grace and the Lesley Parr one. Was Reek last year ? - one of my favourite MG reads this year but I can’t see it

REEK is a BookTrust Great Book! REEK by Alastair Chisholm has been included in the BookTrust Great Book Guide 2025

My book REEK is in the BookTrust Great Books Guide, yaaaay!!! 🥳🥳🥳. Alongside some brilliant company, too – check it out!

👉 alastairc.com/blog/2025100...

@barringtonstoke.bsky.social @booktrust.org.uk #KidLitUk #Reek

I'm delighted that Fallout is on the 7-10+ longlist. Thank you @uklitassociation.bsky.social and @kidsbloomsbury.bsky.social. Congratulations to all other authors and illustrators! 💫

Huge congratulations to @alastairc.com as #REEK longlists for the @uklitassociation.bsky.social Book Awards 2026!

So incredibly proud of these incredible longlists (particularly the 11-14+ list which once again formed the bulk of the last few months' reading) and looking forward to working with our amazing teacher judges in Glasgow as they read and share these books with their classes!

Amazing! Don’t think I knew you were an Antonia Forest fan?! Read Autumn Term on Christmas Day and loved the whole series (school and home) from that moment

Was raving about this dictionary to my class yesterday! It’s brilliant! So clever! And yes, we looked up the word we’d been experimenting with and there is was - parashoot.

The River Thief is a highly engrossing multi-layered story combining early seventeenth history, folklore, adventure and nature. And a new @justimagine_books Reading Gladiator Book Club choice for Year 5. @templarbooks.bsky.social
Review for Just Imagine here:
justimagine.co.uk/childrens-bo...

The wonderful @catwrote.bsky.social is #BookSquad's spotlight author this month! Find books, extracts and resources here: collins.co.uk/pages/catherine-johnson-author-spotlight

This is my new favourite

Lovely selection. My Dog was a summer read and it is astonishing- brilliant debut!

Had a card from a year 3 who thought that when he was grown up I’d probably be in his top 3. Strangely vague and strangely specific

The top two here are absolute favourites so I guess I should look out for the other two!

A note on #NewIllustrationOfTheDay. These daily posts aim to demonstrate the range and quality of children’s book illustration today. But they are also, I hope, an oasis of skill and beauty/humour/curiosity in everyone’s day, whatever else is happening. Please share with anyone who might enjoy that.