Ellen

#writersky #substack

a swim in the local leisure centre in the rain on my fraught journey back to the pool, and the struggles of having a big heid.

New on substack: my thoughts on taking up swimming for my stupid mental health as an adult after a fraught childhood experience with it

Right #LibrarySky and #Booksky — what are your top #kidlit books of 2025? Particularly keen to read stuff on the MG/YA boundary!

puddle / paneer not a recipe, a journal maybe, maybe cope.

I've not made much of a secret of the fact that my mental health has been a little less than stellar of late. Have decided to revisit a teenage coping mechanism, blogging. (This is my roundabout way of saying I've started a substack)

#Substack

Big day to be me.

Boyfriend and I have a back and forth on the go at the moment. He recently finished reading Don Quixote, for context.

Me: We need to get you a new book to read.
Him: Nah, I've finished reading. Finished all the books.
Me: You literally just read the first one.

I grew up right at the perfect golden time to make friends on the internet, who have become some of my closest IRL friends. I got to go to one's wedding a couple year's back! I went to another's birthday party on Wednesday. I feel sad for kids now that a lot of these opportunities seem closed off

“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?

I always hate the way Blinkist frames its services like "read a book in 15 minutes" as if you would get away with telling your pals you'd read the Count of Monte Cristo when actually all you'd done was read the synopsis on Wikipedia.

i always think about the recording i first heard of this where jamie introduces it with "this is a poem simply about being very tired"

Happy #NationalPoetryDay. I picked Lochan by Kathleen Jamie for a school assignment in primary school and it's still my favourite to this day

We agree but add this: the #GreatSchoolLibraries campaign highlights that all children need a school library because adequately funded, staffed school libraries deliver enhanced & independent learning as well as reading & curriculum support & contribute to building lifelong readers. #Staffed

Omg this is so delightful for him how gorgeous

A poster of a manifesto about reading, by Loki, with 6 points on reading "bad" books, short books, comics, audioooks, webcomics and fanfic, plus not finishing bad books cos life is too short.

This is my Lokifesto #KidsConf #UKkidlit #edusky lokibooks.com/lokifesto/

I also know a lot of people considering marriage to their partners much earlier than they otherwise would because of continued threats to clamp down on legal paths to settled status. I know for a fact that not knowing whether we can settle here or in NZ sits in the back of my mind re: having kids

I think we're lurching back into a worrying period of matchmaking for practical circumstance. I know a lot of people who work in the arts/humanities whose wages provide no long term safety so they're looking for it in a partner.

Rachel Reeves pledges a library in every primary school in England Exclusive: Chancellor also set to unveil plans to get young people back into work in party conference speech

This is a very welcome development indeed IF the recurrent costs of funding school librarians is fully budgeted. ‘A pile of books is no more a library than a crowd of soldiers is an army’ to quote Gabriel Naudé who figured this out … 400 years ago… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Always a lot of chat about instilling a love of reading at a young age, which is great. But it doesn't account for the fact that the problem is a lot of kids lose touch with their love of reading in secondary and there's very little out there to encourage retention.

"Fears that kids are disengaging" They are, observably, disengaging. At year 8. We don't need to test them to find this out.

Year 8/9 is an absolutely crucial reading junction and no one is equipped to deal with it. It's where the provisions for World Book Day drop off, there's almost nothing written for boys at this age, reading in class is fully in service of exams - I could go on.

The year 8 reading drop off, observable in every school I've ever set foot in, is due to a massive resource drop off, no timetabling of library time (or lack of library/librarian) and the teenage sense that reading is terminally dull (led by lack of library/librarian). More testing = more tedium.

One of my pals who isn't a big reader recently got herself an eReader and she's been sending me updates on everything she's been reading since. She's legit read like three books in the last month. Proud librarian and proud pal! #LifelongReaders #LibrarianSky

Every day I come to work and I am approached by a fully sentient, walking, talking child, born after the London 2012 Olympics. Still trying to figure out how this is possible.

Event poster: Re-enchantment Readings 17th October 7.30-10pm The Horse Hospital WC1N 1JD Featuring: Ebrubaoghene Abel-Unokan Alexander Orlov Nadia Awad Phoebe Stuckes Tori Mangan Tickets £4

London literary types, I’d love for you to come along to this event we’re putting on next month! Tickets here - www.thehorsehospital.com/events/reenc...

This is a good line though: "One does not teach ‘Macbeth’ and then give “equal prominence” to a text arguing that regicide is a good idea to provide “balance.” The balance comes from the critical skills taught to analyse the text, not from teaching an “opposing” novel."

No action more effective than trying to get one of the most prolific and accessible YA books of the last ten years banned after every child has already read it.

Pleased to see Robert Crawford in the Letters, a Nice Man, who I primarily remember for his emails which addressed students as 'Rapscallions.'

Sometimes egomaniacally get the sense that reading a lot of children's books somehow blunts my literary academic prowess (probably, realistically, the widening temporal gulf between myself and uni). Current solution is to try and read the LRB, which I have to do tracing each line with my pen.

Hello! My school is registered but our contact details are under our old librarian's name. I'm struggling to get in touch with anyone at BookTrust to get this changed! Is there anyone I can get in touch with? Thanks!