There are also book lists, information on the Young Readers Programme and an online event you can sign up for (it’s during the school day) and lots more.
Promote reading to pupils in a fun and interactive way
Engage your pupils in reading activities
Showcase reading role models – giving pupils ‘permission’ to read
Give your class the chance to submit questions to the presenters and ask for shout-outs
Give you the chance to win great prizes for you and your class
You can find ideas on what to do at home with younger children here – https://wordsforlife.org.uk/ the site includes ideas for promoting reading & language development with fun activities for children up to the age of 12.
Thanks to National Book Tokens and lots of lovely book publishers and booksellers, World Book Day, in partnership with schools and nurseries all over the country, distribute over 15 million £1/€1.50 World Book Day book tokens to children and young people (that’s almost one for every child/young person under 18 in the UK and Ireland) every year on World Book Day.
We also have exclusive titles for Wales and Ireland.
World Book Day book tokens will be valid from Thursday 17 February – Sunday 27 March 2022.
Many schools promote World Book Day with a whole day of activities, often including dressing up as a book character. This can be a challenge for families for all sorts of reasons. The sites below offer some easy solutions.
Pinterest
mumsnet – this article includes 75 easy costume ideas!
Closer – DIY costume ideas (£), but also lots of video ideas and characters you can adapt (at no cost) plus some celebrity children dressed for World Book Day.
MadeforMums Last Minute costumes – 102 easy ideas!
At the end of January I caught Covid, which kyboshed my plans to clear the inbox and share gems with you all here. I have finally (after 10 days) had my first NEGATIVE test result and am all good to return to work tomorrow. Apart from the financial damage, I am okay. Grateful and fortunate for that!
So I thought I would share another piece of treasure with you whilst I still had a little time at the desk.
Now, there are several schools of thought on Writer’s Block from it doesn’t exist to chronic suffering. I tend to feel I am somewhere near the not existing end of the spectrum, simply because I believe you block the flow if you tell yourself you are blocked. I do believe (and have experienced) slumps in writing after large projects or book publications, ill health and periods where there has been no writing at all*, I take these to be normal passages of being a writer.
*It is said (widely) that even if you don’t commit words to paper/screen your mind is still creating, gathering and writing for you.
I also know if you are ever suffering medically (as I was in 2019) your brain will not be working in the way you’re used to. Your whole system starts survival mode. Personally, there were 6 months where I didn’t write at all. I actually reached the point of acceptance;
‘Well those years were fun whilst they lasted, what’s next?’
Here for your reading is a Writer’s Digest article from the archives of 2019, it’s a Guest column written by Hope Bolinger.
9 Weird Ways to Beat Writer’s Block
Bolinger starts by looking at typical responses (some of which I’ve stated):
“You just have to write every day.”
“You gotta push past those esoteric obstacles and believe in yourself and your writing.”
And, of course, everyone’s favorite: “Writer’s block doesn’t exist.”
before moving on to tackling nine atypical solutions.
My favourite solutions include:
3) Treat / Rewards
…we will psychologically program ourselves to equate rewards with writing. Done in moderation, our brains will work harder to achieve these benchmark prizes. So set the bar. Once you reach an attainable goal (500 words, a completed article, etc.), don’t be afraid to gift yourself when you hit it.
7) Get anti-social
I love writing, but I also love Pinterest. Take a wild guess at which one sucks me in for hours.
Although social media has allowed writers to connect with readers from across the world and share fantastic tips in various writing communities across all social media platforms, it takes us away from the thing we post about all the time: writing.
Various apps such as FocusON and Anti-Social allow for authors to turn off social media and focus on the writing. Don’t worry. Once you finish those last fifty words, you can turn social back on and beam at all the Instagram notifications to your heart’s content.
When I first started writing and hadn’t built up discipline, I used to use the other laptop, the one which refused to acknowledge the fact we had the internet. I was more productive! We all know that time slip when you just pop on for one post or the rabbit holes of research (wondrous though they are). If you only have 30 minutes, use it ALL for writing!
For more atypical solutions read the full article here.
Today, our featured participant is Uncle Phil’s Blog, where the Shadorma/Fib prompt for Day 7 led to a very funny shadorma indeed.
Our featured reading for the day is pre-recorded, so that you can watch it whenever you like. It features the poet Denise Duhamel, reading at Arizona State University.
Our prompt – I call this one “Return to Spoon River,” after Edgar Lee Masters’ eminently creepy 1915 book Spoon River Anthology. The book consists of well over 100 poetic monologues, each spoken by a person buried in the cemetery of the fictional town of Spoon River, Illinois.
Today, I’d like to challenge you to read a few of the poems from Spoon River Anthology, and then write your own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead. Not a famous person, necessarily – perhaps a remembered acquaintance from your childhood, like the gentleman who ran the shoeshine stand, or one of your grandmother’s bingo buddies. As with Masters’ poems, the monologue doesn’t have to be a recounting of the person’s whole life, but could be a fictional remembering of some important moment, or statement of purpose or philosophy. Be as dramatic as you like – Masters’ certainly didn’t shy away from high emotion in writing his poems.
Happy writing!
PROCESS NOTES:Watch out for the not-really-Rabbit-Holes!
Welcome to the 2nd week of NaPoWriMo! I found today good fun, hope you do too. I started with the featured participant I LOVED the coffee poem, both poems followed form. The Shadorma about family was intriguing – I know the Shadorma was promoted as funny (it can be read this way) < see how subjective poetry is? When I read it – Uncle Pete caused concern and then later in thought perhaps sympathy – the fact we don’t know why he is left out is a little sinister, or perhaps just brothers who have fallen out, there’s lots to unpack for such a short form – clever writing.
Today was a day of 100s of poems! I listened to the Denise Duhamel Poetry Reading at ASU. Denise Duhamel Poetry Reading at the Arizona State University “Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference.”
Denise Duhamel earned a BFA at Emerson College and an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Citing Dylan Thomas and Kathleen Spivack as early influences, Duhamel writes both free verse and fixed-form poems that fearlessly combine the political, sexual, and ephemeral. Duhamel has published numerous collections of poetry, including Kinky (1997), Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (2001), and Ka-Ching! (2009). Her honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been included in several volumes of Best American Poetry, and has also been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Bill Moyers’s PBS poetry special Fooling with Words. An associate professor at Florida International University, she lives in Florida.
It was a great reading, amusing and a fantastic companion to my morning coffee and at 20 minutes more manageable than some of the featured readings offered. The story behind her Sestina to Sean Penn is brilliant! Delta Flight 659 for Sean Penn. I will watch/listen/share this reading.
Photo credit: Gary Lanier
If you want more than 20 minutes of poetry you can let Vimeo deliver the rest of the “Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference” videos to your screen, most of them are from 2012 Conference.
I listened to Sally Ball. – Not exactly a rabbit hole because I wasn’t seeking it – glad I caught her reading though.
Sally Ball reading from “Annus Mirabilis” at the Arizona State University “Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference.”
Sally Ball is the author of Annus Mirabilis, which was selected by Ellen Bryant Voigt for the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize (NY: Barrow Street, 2005). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Ploughshares, Slate, Threepenny Review, Yale Review, and other journals, as well as in the Best American Poetry anthology. Ball is the associate director of Four Way Books, an independent press based in New York City. In 2007 she was the Margaret Bridgman Fellow in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, where she teaches poetry workshops, courses in modern and contemporary American poetry, and a literary publishing and editing class. She also offers internships with Four Way Books to students in the MFA Program for Creative Writing.
I also read more of Denise Duhamel‘s poems on Poets.org – again notreally-a-rabbit-hole as it was on the same page as the NaPo link and I have only just discovered Denise today and loved her work. Rabbit Hole in time though. I have stored a few for later.
NaPoWriMo often send gems of ebook resources, I didn’t read all of the Spoon River Anthology but I have saved the link on my NaPo resource list. A free book, always a bonus!
Today’s prompt meant that I returned to the book with a 2nd cup of coffee to read a few poems. I have only ever written one dramatic monologue – they were a popular form here on the spoken word circuit about 5 years ago, especially amongst students studying creative writing. Of course they have been in vogue for years and used by Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Eliot and Yeats, to name a few. They are sometimes referred to as persona poems. I have a background in theatre and drama so at one point in my life knew more monologues than poems. The poetic form is a little different from the dramatic form.
I know this prompt is one I shall start this morning and carry with me before I sit to write it out. Especially as I have my first walk in 2021 Walk in Nature planned before lunch. It won’t be far because of the leg/back recovery but it will be OUTSIDE and although cold the sky is blue, there is no sun and the sun is SHINING! Scarf and boots ready. Also it was around this time last year in the 1st UK Lockdown when I felt brave enough to venture outside of my home range for a walk. I saw three fields over the course of 2020 grow through a cycle that let me know some of our world still works as it did. There are geese, ducks, birds of prey and the hills in the background and in a socially distanced way, my mum (who has been shielding so we have big gaps of time where we didn’t see each other off screen).
The walk was a joy! The sky was big.
PROMPT:
… read a few of the poems from Spoon River Anthology, and then write your own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead… perhaps a remembered acquaintance from your childhood, … a fictional remembering of some important moment, or statement of purpose or philosophy.
Read from The Project Gutenberg EBook of Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters.
I only read a few of the poems from Spoon River, Cassius Hueffer explores the idea of people’s idea* of us and our real selves can be different. *I like the idea that it may not be the truthful version of what people think anyway but the gravestone is not the place to write a harsh truth. I know whatever comes in the next few hours will stem from this poem.
Dramatic Monologues:
The basics of a dramatic monologue, demonstrated through the poems collected in the Spoon River Anthology:
Single person speaking/ opinions not necessarily those of poet (assumed character)/ – which creates a distance between the reader and the writer, /it is dramatic (like the theatre- settings/character/conflict) so is spoken to/assumes a listener or is addressed to another character.
M.H. Abrams says; “The main principle controlling the poet’s choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker’s temperament and character.”
What came out was a two page poem about a friend we recently lost to suicide. In his voice. Free written, typed at speed. I won’t share an extract but I feel him with me, in my heart.
WOW. Today’s Napo is powerful and not necessarily pleasant in the end, give yourselves self-care if you have written about … or found this traumatic or difficult, this prompt could unpluck a lot of people. Take care. x
Follow on Twitter @librariesweek to stay up to date with this year’s campaign. A good way to discover what your local library is up to, or further afield (the joy of online).
The panel have chosen these novels on the theme of Identity: Beloved by Toni Morrison; Days Without End by Sebastian Barry; Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels; Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; Small Island by Andrea Levy; The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy; Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe; White Teeth by Zadie Smith
I have been amazed at the Library Service over this time, they have offered so much to us all in isolation. We are back to renewing our books online ourselves, which means the library is open again! Whoop!
Use the word, do not look up the definition. Spend 3 minutes writing about what you think the word means.
Choose one of these words (pick a language you don’t speak).
Set a timer for 3 minutes, if you don’t have one use this link and set one in the background. https://timer.onlineclock.net/
Start writing – it is important you keep your pen or keyboard moving, don’t worry if your mind takes you off the original instruction, don’t worry about the content, silence your inner editor and just keep the words coming.
I have only discovered Gateway Women UK and World Childless Week today whilst breaking from Admin in Social Media.
This is something rarely spoken about, very much the stories which remain inside us. However, the amount of times women my age and younger are asked the question of children, well it is pretty much every conversation I have ever had with a stranger or new acquaintance since 2005 and it is a painful question.
So with a mighty trigger warning – I am sharing the work of the Gateway Women. With love to you all, those lucky enough and those who are not.
World Childless Week aims to raise awareness of the childless not by choice (cnbc) community. To help the cnbc find support groups that understand their grief and can help them move forwards to acceptance. It’s for anyone who is childless because they have never been pregnant (for any reason), not carried full term or have suffered the sadness of a baby born sleeping. All our Champions and founder Steph, represent our audience.
This link will land you on today’s events page, if you scroll down you can read the letters. Once you are on the first letter The Baby On The Back Seat By Kenny And Berenice Smith you can click through the other stories.
These tales are often too painful to tell, but for those who cannot write them – reading them can give some much needed healing.
A tiny part of mine seeped into my first pamphlet ‘Fragile Houses’.
I was curious about the acorns in the tree… weren’t you? This date has been significant for well over 60 years.
November 20th Universal Children’s Day.
The Background
The United Nations’ (UN) Universal Children’s Day, which was established in 1954, is celebrated on November 20 each year to promote international togetherness and awareness among children worldwide. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, promotes and coordinates this special day, which also works towards improving children’s welfare.
Many countries, including Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, hold Universal Children’s Day events on November 20 to mark the anniversaries of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
There is a whole menu page with books on understanding Human Rights, freedom, Children’s Rights, justice and solidarity all aimed at children/ Young Adults on the
Book yourself some time off and treat yourself to a FREE online writing retreat this Autumn. Join us in real time, or wander around the posts at your leisure.
Easy links to previous years will also be available.
Many of us will have missed the great programme this year – but look… the wonderful team behind the festival have launched Podcasts from specific events. There is a wide range to choose from – or listen to them all, treat yourself.
© Google
awritersfountain 