Hi, welcome to my blog. I’ve got three children, and, luckily for me, they all love reading. I say luckily for me because there’s a load of books in our house and if they didn’t read them then I’d feel a bit stupid! It’s also great because they can read my books and be critical. Which they are! Anyway, because I’m a children’s writer (and do pretty much anything to avoid sitting down and writing) I also read a lot of kids and YA books, so between the four of us we’ve covered a load of books. Because I drone on about books quite a lot, a few people have asked me for suggestions for what their children might like to read, so I thought it might be a more interesting thing to blog about than how much trouble I was having with Chapter 6…

There’s also a couple of sites that I use a lot and rate which I thought I could pass on.

http://www.storynory.com/ This is a fantastic resource. It’s free audio stories for kids; there are classic fairy tales, myths, legends, original stories; all sorts, all read by professional actors, and all free!

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/ This is where I get all my out of print books. It’s worldwide, very reliable and always has what you need. Great for presents as well, first editions of people’s favourite books are not necessarily massively expensive, but usually go down very well. They also do quite fun mail shots – EG 50 essential YA novels, 50 books for an 11 yr old and so on.  Brilliant.

This is a fantastic scheme run by the Premier League which I’m lucky enough to be involved in – http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/plrs_2014_home – it’s geared towards getting children to read and does it mainly by getting premiership footballers to read books online and talk about their favourite books. They also ask questions and if you answer them correctly you get prizes. It’s a great initiative and there will be more about it soon.