WELCOME TO
The ‘Bookmark This’ Blog
Read about my favourite books, teaching, reading for pleasure and other things that interest me, like Icelandic traditions and honesty boxes in the Scottish Highlands. Be warned, I have been known to ramble.
Reading for enjoyment & reluctant readers
Reading for enjoyment is at “crisis point” according to recent National Literacy Trust research. My advice in this blog post will not have any children swapping their PlayStations and phones for poetry and prose, but it does offer some genre suggestions and strategies that I have seen success with in terms of engaging some very disengaged readers in my (nearly 18 years of) experience of supporting young people with literacy difficulties.
Take your “man up” nonsense and get it in the bin!
With most difficult topics or questions I turn to a book. Even just for a starting off point. There’s so much nuance in relationships and feelings, I find myself getting into a brain fankle trying to explain it all to a 3…4…5…6 year old! Picture books are the answer. In fact, they are almost always the answer! So I hope adding to our section on feelings and including those trickier topics like death, family separation & racism will be useful for you too.
Reading for pleasure, buy a book, donate a book and then what?
I have been asking myself/the internet/my husband/my colleagues (I’m a lot of fun at parties, I know!) but what happens once kids get these books? Don’t misunderstand me, I am so excited to be able to celebrate World Book Day as a bookseller as well as a parent this year and truly believe what they do is phenomenal. But once these kids have their book - is it just gathering dust? Especially for those young people who are classed as growing up in “disadvantage and inequality”? (I promise it gets more positive soon…)
The Book Hibernacle
I am a sucker for an honesty box - the north of Scotland’s mainland and beyond into the Orkney and Shetland islands are littered with them. In Crail, there’s a very lovely honesty box at the little beach with buckets and sandcastle tools to borrow. I mean, come on. There must be an equation about the number of honesty boxes and handwritten signs an area has, the greater my love is for that place. Little Free Libraries fall into the same category. There’s something so wholesome about them. Open to everyone.
Hello!
Moonlight Rainbow Books is a one woman show (with some help from loved ones - you know who you are!) I’m Sheila. I’ve recently entered the “middle age” phase of life. I turned 40 and gave birth to our second child a month later. A wee chill dude. That classes me as a mother of “advanced maternal age” which, let’s face it, doesn’t sound much better than the out of date “geriatric mother” terminology! My husband and I also have a daughter who is outrageously creative, curious and fiery. She and I share a love for picture books (and having the last word)
Snuggly, Silly & Spooky Seasonal Suggestions
Despite all of the above, I do not love actual Halloween. But that’s probably a whole other blog post (and probably a bit more niche reading!) So I’ll stop rambling and instead share some of our favourite autumnal picks, whether you prefer a cosy night snuggled up under a blanket with a book (hot chocolate optional) or you want to get in the mood for All Hallows’ Eve with some (friendly) ghost stories (or a ghostly broom) these should tick all the boxes of what a great season-specific book should be (there are some out there where the seasonal setting seems to have superseded the storyline!)
The Countdown is on
This is me dipping my toe in the book world water. I’ve talked about opening a picture bookshop for a very long time. For most of that time having the notion of it was enough though, an idyllic daydream to escape into every now and then (the full fat, full sugar daydream is a cosy wee bricks and mortar place somewhere in the East Neuk, with lots of fairy lights, snug seating & decent free coffee for the grown ups, with an old fashioned bell that cheerily chimes as you come in and you kind of feel like you’re in another world where it’s calm and hopeful…not that I’ve thought about it much…) But then the day dream became frustrating and I kept thinking well, why can’t it ever be real?
We are open, Jólabókaflóðið and in 5 weeks it's Boxing Day
To celebrate launching the store today (AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!) and with Christmas not very far off, let’s talk about the Icelandic Christmas Eve tradition of Jólabókaflóðið (pronounced YO-lah-bok-ah-flod). Not to be confused with the (terrifying) Icelandic Christmas creature, Jólakötturinn (the giant Yule Cat who eats children)