All change, ladies and gentlemen

I remember telling Junior Reader about old trams one time – the kind where the tram couldn’t turn round when it reached the end of the line. So the seats would be manually flipped up to face the opposite direction – and the driver would change ends. And, of course, the passengers would need to disembark. …

Friday phrase: and now we can go to your frankfurter parties

With summer right here right now (even if it may be chucking it down while you’re reading this), thought turn to being outdoors, barbecues and so on. Or maybe not. Sometimes, the dreams of easy get-togethers aren’t so easy – if you don’t think you’ll be invited in the first place. We’ve all had moments …

End of term report: June 2014

It’s not quite the end of the week – but it is nearly the end of term. And you can bet that, come mid August, all those bright wee things will have sprouted extra inches of leg and new hairstyles and far more in-depth knowledge of whatever it is they’re keen on. So maybe it’s …

Making: reusing fabric

I don’t know if the moment has passed, but there seemed to be a stage at which you were besieged with eco bags at every turn. Supermarkets sold them to you; conferences pressed them on you (to hold all the paper that you then didn’t need anyway. Hmm.) I started into eco bags a while …

Lit Kid: folk tales from around the world

I’ve written about folk tales before. Mostly in the ‘fill the gap between chapter books‘ kind of way. And that’s good. But with Junior Reader somewhat more of a seasoned traveller than before, and a bit more aware of different countries (thank you, Olympics and Commonwealth Games), folk tales from around the world now have …