Welcome to the blog!
I’m well aware that mindfulness is a buzzword and I’m generally not a fan of such things. However, my dad (AKA Geoff Dean) has been espousing the virtues of being mindful and training your brain for as long as I can remember. While I’ve never successfully calmed because #WIRED, he’s…
READ MORE
With the move to blended learning/home-based learning in Term Two, I have been adapting some of what I do in library lessons to deliver it in such a way that students are still reading and responding to quality literature during this time. School libraries have been adapting to changing learning…
READ MORE
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now you’ll know that I have a propensity to change up our bedrooms a little too regularly. I’ve been doing this since I was quite young and I vividly remember moving furniture around my bedroom and swapping bedlinen and bedroom trinkets…
READ MORE
All families are different and I try very hard to feature books here on my blog for all families. Mother’s Day can be a beautiful day of honouring your mum or mother figure, or it may be a really tricky or fraught day for you….I so understand this. My own mum…
READ MORE
Last week was PudStar’s 12th birthday and she was meant to have a few close friends for a wood fired DIY pizza party, backyard firepit and sleepover. Clearly with coronavirus hitting Australia (mid March 2020) and talk of social distancing, the party needed to be cancelled. When the world is…
READ MORE
Zanni and I met at Children’s Book Council of Australia conference, where we walked around the garden of Jackie French together, and let me tell you, that is a wonderful place to start a friendship! I have followed the rise and rise of Zanni Louise since this time and continue…
READ MORE
I don’t know if every family does this but in my family it’s always been books, new pyjamas and eggs for Easter – as well as an Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday which significantly adds to the Easter egg haul. This year, the girls and I will be in…
READ MORE
The Rouges trilogy by Lian Tanner is showing all the signs of being as popular as her previous trilogy, The Keepers, and is rarely on the shelves in the school library. The melding of high risk adventure and magic works brilliantly in the hands of a skilled writer, such as…
READ MORE
For Christmas this year, both my children (8 and 11) received Kobo Clara eReaders. Perhaps a controversial gift from a librarian mother, but I like to think I embrace all forms of reading and I know that my own eReader and my audio book ‘habit’ greatly increases the amount of…
READ MORE
“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. Max Porter ‘Grief is the Thing With Feathers’ Crappy grief week but please no pity. The light and the dark co-exist and I think I do a…
READ MORE