Carnegie Medal Nominations 2017

First, to anyone at YA Shot in Uxbridge today, have a great day! Second, if anyone here's going to be at the UKYA Blogging Awards at Uxbridge tonight, yay! I'll see you there.  On with the post!

photo from CILIP website

It seems to to come round quicker and quicker every year, Yesterday, the nominations for the CILIP Carnegie and the Kate Greenaway medals were released. Due to my being at uni now, I sadly don't have the brilliant booklet my school librarian produced which had all the blurbs of the books recommended, so this post is based upon a)the bits I've heard from social media over the year and b)when I googled the things with interesting titles. But here- a list of the books that I am glad to see on the list, and would totally bump up a reading pile if I had time to do any reading for pleasure right now.

National Coming Out Day 2016

National Coming Out Day is the celebration of people coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, an ally to the LGBTQ community, or something else-however you want to define yourself. In coming out, you can increase the representation of LGBTQ people in your community, reduce the silence which can help perpetuate negative stereotypes and hatred because there's no-one to speak out against them, or to remind perpetrators that queer people are real, and everywhere, and not some other alien concept. It can also help you just be happier with yourself and acknowledge who you are for you.

photo credit: trec_lit MmmmmMmmm via photopin (license)

What I'm Taking to Uni

So this past few months, many exciting things have been happening for me, which have been better documented on instagram and twitter. I had another packed Edinburgh Fringe, full of brilliant comedians, poets, and theatre pieces. I've had some great times with my friends, which is just as well because we're now scattered across the country and the continent,  because we're all off to uni! I can't believe I was in Year 8 when I started this blog and I now I've got a place at my first choice university to study Classics and French, but hey, time flies!

Along the many bags of clothes and equipment I have packed before I move into the college tomorrow, obviously, I have books, and I thought I'd share what I'm taking. But first, exciting news... 

I got nominated, alongside Sally of The Dark Dictator, and Andrew of The Pewter Wolf, in the UKYA Blogger Awards for Champion of Diversity! Thank you for everyone who nominated me, in despite of the fact that my championing of diverse books, at least this past couple of years, hasn't really been via my blog, more in person- see my TEDx Talk on why you should read diversely, which I might vlog some day seeing as I'm not sure what happened to the footage, the We Need Diverse Books board we put up at my school that stayed in a main corridor for over a year, and anyone who has read Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda because they asked me for a recommendation and that's been my go to book to pass on. I hope to be able to step up both my blog and my promotion of a range of books in the future, and it's nice to have a little spur to do so. And congrats to everyone else who got nominated, in all categories! You can find a list of all categories and nominees here (until it gets buried when they tweet other things).


The main post is under the cut- the books I'm  taking-and hopefully keeping up there, if they fit on whatever shelving they give me!