Best of the Web: an author’s suggestion for a ‘revolution-starting’ Book Week costume, and more

(Melanie La’Brooy, The Guardian)

Acclaimed author Melanie La’Brooy has a subversive idea for Book Week. A call to arms, even.

Her children won’t be putting on a T-shirt and jeans and pretending to be the protagonist from their favourite book.  Instead she wants them to celebrate a person who has helped introduce them to their literary heroes in the first place…

The school librarian.

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(Hannah Story, ABC News)

Karen Comer didn’t publish her first book until she was 49, but the pandemic lockdowns in Melbourne gave her the time she needed to complete her verse book: Grace Notes. Now she’s the winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year for Older Readers.

Tristan Bancks has been writing for a bit longer. Scar Town, the CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers, is one of many children’s books he has written over the past 16 years. But he still finds it ‘beyond exciting’ that kids have responded to his novel.

Tristan says author can connect with young audiences by ‘visiting schools and giving author talks, and by simply writing the kinds of books kids want to read’.

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(Sarah Ayoub, The Guardian)

When Sarah Ayoub was in school, skin care was a matter of slip, slop, slap. Now, preteens make up almost half of the skin care sales in American drug stores, and they’re big consumers of beauty products in Australia, too.

Parents are concerned about the trend, and child psychologists are worried about the long term effects of the promotion of beauty messages and products could have on young children.

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