My #shelfie – by Kate Ling
I don’t believe in keeping books; I think they should be free to fly away and find new readers. I feel this is especially true of books I love, as it seems even more important that they pass through as many hands as possible. I guess this must be the librarian in me. This is why, even though I buy a lot of books, I literally don’t possess any at all.
But that’s OK, because this (just a hint of it pictured) is my playground, my baby, my work of art…
I’ve been responsible for the collection at the school where I have my day job for four years now, and during that time I’ve swelled its numbers by thousands. Every year I get free reign to order books, and it is my favourite part of the job – talking to the students about what they love, reading as much as possible in the name of research, trying to predict what will be getting my students excited in six months’ time, adding in a few of my personal favourites to see whether they will capture new hearts as they once did mine.
Roald Dahl remains popular with the younger students, as does Micheal Morpurgo, now joined by Liz Pichon and David Walliams in the hall of fame of children’s literature. Girls love Holly Smale’s Geek Girl series, anything by Rainbow Rowell, Holly Bourne’s Spinster Club series and even still borrow Judy Blume’s books. Boys go for the Maze Runner trilogy, Robert Muchamore’s CHERUB books and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. My personal favourites to recommend are All The Bright Places, I’ll Give You The Sun, Everything Everything, Paper Butterflies, A Thousand Pieces of You, Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series, Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Annabel Pitcher’s books, the Sin Eater’s Daughter trilogy, as well as anything by Stephen King because I was his biggest fan as a teenager. Many of these are not pictured, as they are out on loan at the time of writing; I take this as a vote of confidence in my recommendations.
Find out more about Kate Ling’s latest novel, The Glow of Fallen Stars.
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