First post

Welcome to my blog in which I’ll mainly be exploring my slan(n)t on aspects of children’s books, making links between them and other things that interest me including history, politics, cultural diversity, the environment, film, feminism. I may go off at a tan(n)gent about other things too!

After around 40 years working as a librarian with children and their teachers and carers, most of that time at Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, I’m about to retire but the world of children’s books is an eternally fascinating one. There are many themes I’m looking forward to exploring so expect future blogs to be on topics such as: 

  • Books about the environment for children and activism
  • Feminist fairy tales
  • Chinese characters in current children’s fiction
  • The representation of Arabs in children’s literature (my MA dissertation subject 15 years ago in which there have been developments)
  • The women’s suffrage movement 

You can follow me on Twitter @annlazim

In one of life’s serendipitous moments, as I finished writing the above, the doorbell rang and outside was a package with a selection of pre-publication proofs from Macmillan Children’s Books, including some that look like they will relate to some of the topics I’ve mentioned. One of them was Hilary McKay’s The Swallows’ Flight, accompanied by a letter from the author which begins with a quote from Emily Dickinson ‘Hope is a thing with feathers’ which is a good reminder to me to say that it was another of her poems ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant’ that inspired the name for my blog. I like the fact that ‘telling it slant’ could have a variety of interpretations. Thanks to my son, Haroun, for the suggestion of incorporating my name into the title!

Currently reading:

Red Stars by Davide Morosinotto, translated from Italian by Denise Muir

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

Sisterhood and After by Margaretta Jolly

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

Blood Moon by Lucy Cuthew

At the top of the waiting to be read pile:

When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle

Front Desk by Kelly Yang

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (graphic novel)

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