Category: Top 10 & Top 5 Seasonal Reads

Check out our Top 10 and Top 5 picks for fiction, non-fiction, YA, poetry, translation, and kids’ books for some great seasonal reads.  Find your new favorite book to cozy up with this season!

Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 3

Although The Children’s Bookshow hits the road in the Autumn, tickets to many shows have already sold out and the remainder are selling fast. All performances include a free book for every child.

Marina Warner, the historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer, forms a persuasive case for fairy tales being a crucial repository of human understanding and culture in her very short introduction published by OUP. After all, they have the same core ingredients as most adult fiction: archetypal characters, conflict, desire, injustice, high octane drama, overcoming challenges, hope and heroism, beauty and blissful immersion in alternative worlds which reignite creativity and inspire new ideas. Their surreal magical quality and captivating illustrations make for a visual feast and offer a form of escapism from the real world around us. Continue reading Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 3

Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 2

For over twenty years, The Children’s Bookshow has tirelessly worked to promote, up and down the country, not only a love of reading, but also emerging and established children’s authors who are not TV celebrities chatting on a sofa.

In 2022, Michael Rosen, who was children’s laureate from 2007 to 2009, flagged up the problem that the promotion of the children’s book industry is generally celebrity-focused, “We are the Cinderellas of the book business, with very little media attention, so it’s small wonder that some children’s writers feel miffed by the fact that seemingly the only attention given to a children’s book is because the writer is already a star.”

The good news is that children’s books are getting more attention than ever before in the media, and today, The Children’s Bookshow is recognised as being an incredible asset to the book trade and an acknowledged talent-spotter. So we are delighted to share with you our second line up of authors and illustrators and their books on tour this year.

Continue reading Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 2

News | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 1

The Children’s Bookshow is back! The writers and illustrators of children’s literature touring the regions of England this year will be offering a fantastic variety of entertaining performances in which artists share stories, poems and live drawing, and talk to children about how they create. Siân Williams, founder of the tour back in 2000, was admirably astute in the way she took author events out of bookshops into much bigger venues, offering a great afternoon out to schoolchildren. The events are not organized from the point of view of the publisher and bookseller whose focus is just on selling books, so the atmosphere is like a gig or stand-up comedy performance and everyone has lots of fun!

#BookBlast is delighted to share with you the first line up of authors and illustrators and their books on show this year. More to follow . . . National treasure, Michael Rosen, will be performing again too.

See Michael Rosen in person: Peterborough – Wednesday 4 October BOOK TICKET(S)

Continue reading News | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 1

BookBlast® Discoveries | Top 5 Reads for Independent Minds from Inkandescent

East London-based independent publisher Inkandescent “was ‘founded by outsiders for outsiders’ to celebrate original and diverse talent and to publish voices and stories the mainstream neglects – specifically those of the working class and financially disadvantaged, ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community and, crossing the Venn diagram, those with physical disabilities and mental health issues,” write Justin David and Nathan Evans in their introduction to MAINSTREAM.  Continue reading BookBlast® Discoveries | Top 5 Reads for Independent Minds from Inkandescent

BookBlasts® | Top 10 Black Classics for independent minds | June 2020

The prolific outpouring of support in the press, book trade newsletters and across social media in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd in eight minutes and forty-six seconds in Minneapolis gives a glimmer of hope at a time of pandemic bleakness and flawed leadership.

The murder of a black citizen at the hands of a white policeman, and protests against it, is nothing new, and is not only an American problem, but “shooter bias” is prevalent in Britain and Europe too. The 1967 film In the Heat of the Night starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger is a must-see film classic. Continue reading BookBlasts® | Top 10 Black Classics for independent minds | June 2020

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