Blogs
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Oct312018
Poems
Hello all. I have been scribbling a few poems about my sprogs. Some of these are available as prints free with some of our fab kickstarter pledge prizes. ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Oct222018
Eve's New Brother
Our kickstarter launched today for our new book. It's about Eve getting to know her new brother... She's finding it pretty challenging because Stanley doesn't know how to play with trains properly, he spits food on the floor and is generally annoying! But her mothers help her work through it with talking, cuddles and lots of love. Meanwhile Stanley grows up a tiny bit and... Spoiler alert: it works out ok in the end. ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Oct102018
Celebrating Black History Month
In our family we are celebrating Black History Month! The kids are still young so we keep the stories we tell them positive. Our 4yo loves learning about Mary Seacole and Rosa Parks. We bought a bunch of books about black historical figures (and other diverse books) before Eddie was even born. We were so excited and passionate about giving our children a diverse library and exposing them to a range of diverse and inclusive stories about people from all over the world. ...
By Sheju John
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Oct102018
Inspiring books by BAME authors
I've been thinking about black history month and about amazing black historical figures. Growing up in multicultural London and going to an amazing school with lots of different kinds of people was brilliant. And actually the most amazing thing to happen to me to help me understand about and be really interested in different cultures was my English literature school reading list, selected by my inspiring teacher Ardu Vakil, when I was 18. ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Sep252018
New books, new books, new books!
We're making two new books. One will be illustrated by Vanessa Arduini who we LOVE and the other will be drawn by someone NEW. We are in the process of selecting an illustrator this week. It's a great process and quite challenging because we want to get EXACTLY RIGHT so we make a stonking new book for you all. ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Sep192018
Books in the post!
We finally got the new delivery of books!! Yippee! I'm sorry to everyone who is still waiting for theirs... but good news! They are in the post. Also: we're hatching a plan with James Dixon school to do something fun during diversity week; We're working on our Tamil translation for Buddy's Pancakes; AND we're making TWO MORE BOOKS!! ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Aug292018
Parakeet book club at the Paxton centre
The kids at the Paxton Centre seemed to enjoy the book reading morning so we've decided to do a little run of them. On the 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th of September at 10.30 I'll be reading books from our collection at home. ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Aug172018
A poem for you
I wrote a poem in response to how a lot of people (deffo myself included) comment on children's (usually girls) clothes. It happens to my daughter all the time and it's funny really because when I put her in a pretty skirt yesterday she pulled it off in favour of wandering around with a swim nappy on her head. ...
By Judy Skidmore
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Aug162018
WE DID IT!!
Thanks to everyone who backed our kickstarter campaign. You are wonderful. ...
![Sometimes our kid doesn’t want to read. It's probably fine to have a break, now and then. But we do worry. Just a tiny bit. So we've evolved some work arounds to encourage him to use his eyeballs for good things, which in our world, means reading.
What are your tips?
[Image Descriptions:
How to encourage a reluctant reader to pick up a book.
1. Try something other than a chapter book or typical kids fiction. We've tried magazines, comics, fact books.
2. You read. Pick up wherever they're up to and read a few pages. Hopefully they'll get hooked and take it from there.
3. Get thee to a library! So much choice. Our kid usually manages to find something bearable to read
4. Revisit favourite picture books. Something you've read many times takes on new meaning as they grow
5. Diversify your bookshelf. Show them themselves in a book. And show them the wonderful world out there.]](https://www.parakeetbooks.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)