Category Archives: YA
Autistic All Along
This article originally appeared on Culturefly I was diagnosed as autistic in the autumn of 2024, a few years after my daughter’s diagnosis with ADHD and the GP’s suggested pursuit of an ASD diagnosis in its wake. I was 54 … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, love, Uncategorized, YA
Tagged actuallyautistic, adhd, autism, book-review, books, mental-health, YA romance
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My Teeth in Your Heart
On the eastern edge of the island of Cyprus sits a string of built-up resort towns – Protaras, Paralimni, Ayia Napa – the latter famed for its night life that begins late afternoon and ends – if it ends – sometime around dawn. But … Continue reading
A Calamity of Mannerings heading your way
Take a peek into the diary of Panth (never enquire as to her given name), a young woman knocking on the gilded door of adult life and high society. But kicking up one’s heels at the Cafe de Paris does … Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, love, Reading, romance, Teen, women's fiction, YA
Tagged 1920s, Bridgerton, Downton, I Capture the Castle, Mitfords, YA romance
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Head in all the books
I read a lot. A LOT. About sixty so far this year though it feels more like eleventy billion. Some for work, some for pleasure, some for both. Some I’ve put down after two pages because CLUNKY. Some because the … Continue reading
Posted in 1970s, 1980s, Blog, creative writing, Fiction, women's fiction, YA
Tagged Cormoran Strike, Eimear McBride, Emma Glass, Jess Kidd, Sarah Crossan, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Tracey Thorn, William Sutcliffe
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My BAFTA-Winning Boy
This is how it started. A small boy I’d glimpsed on a street in Peckham, his sleeping bag on his back like a nylon snail. From that came pages of notes about a boy called Tom, who eventually turned into … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Teen, YA
Tagged BAFTA, Beryl Richards, CBBC, Daniel Frogson, Joe All Alone, Liani Samuel, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Zodiak Kids
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BAFTA, baby!
On Friday, someone asked me how different my life was a decade ago. And other than the Menace being smaller and markedly more menacing, and my home being two roads away, I said it barely was. ten years ago I … Continue reading
Posted in creative writing, Fiction, middle grade, Teen, YA
Tagged BAFTA, Beryl Richards, CBBC, Daniel Frogson, Joe All Alone, Joe Sims, Liani Samuels, Nadine Marsh-Edwards, Vas Blackwood, Zodiak Kids
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CBBC’s Joe All Alone and the truth about child poverty
Joe All Alone is a book (and, now, BBC TV series) about friendship. It’s a book about family, and what constitutes that today. It’s a book about bullying. It’s a book about difference and acceptance. But beneath all that, it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Blog, Fiction, middle grade, Teen, Uncategorized, YA
Tagged CBBC, child poverty, Daniel Frogson, Home Alone, Joanna Nadin, Joe All Alone, Joe Sims, Vas Blackwood
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Joe in the post
In the run-up to Christmas, opening the post is always accompanied by a little frisson of anticipation, invariably dampened when I find it is only catalogues or credit statements or a card from someone I have never met addressed to … Continue reading
Posted in Blog, middle grade, Reading, Teen, YA
Tagged Banijay, CBBC, Daniel Frogson, Joe All Alone, Joe Sims, tv drama, Vas Blackwood, Zodiak
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The Carnegie Feeling
I have never been one of life’s winners when it comes to sport, barely even scraping third in the 1979 St Mary’s Primary sports day yoghurt-pot-and-umbrella race (actual race, involving running wildly around the field with an empty Ski pot … Continue reading
Posted in Blog, YA
Tagged Anthony McGowan, Atom Books, Carnegie Medal, Everybody Hurts, Hachette, Joanna Nadin, Leeds, Little Brown, love, teen romance, YA
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Joanna Nadin 