Just So Stories

Here we go again! 2024 – wowzers! for those of my vintage, it’s the stuff of science fiction really, and yet, here we are living it.

This has been a significant year for us.

It marked my 30 years of teaching (late starter after raising kids), over 25 as a teacher-librarian, and, essentially, the beginning of my retirement. I’d like to still be in a library, but not only are those jobs scarce but employers are ageist. Luckily, my regular schools who call on me for relief appreciate me, so I manage quite well with a little help from my super.

The Kid finished Year 12. Her schooling has been higgledy-piggledy at best, both when her mum was alive and, for the past nine years, with me, as we had to at times, change tack in order to find the best place to support her. But this final year at Brisbane School of Distance Ed, with a great program and terrific support teachers, saw her have a truly happy and rewarding year, and a girl (and gran) happy and proud of her graduation. She even got an award, so it was pretty special. We celebrated in various ways, but particularly with our first adventure since before Covid – a little trip to Canberra. Now she’s just snagged a job at our local golf club and is learning the ropes of serving behind the bar and taking care of customers, and it looks promising for her. That will keep her busy while we sort out the foundation of her journey to work in screen/media starting with a basic TAFE course. She now has the NDIS to support her moving forward, and while it’s not been without hiccups this first six months, I’m sure it will improve 🤞.

And, of course, it was a big year for this blog. A decade since I first thought ‘perhaps I should be collating these reviews I’ve started doing for people somewhere’. I gave it a revamp – and had some lovely positive feedback on the new look – which was great because it was a total pain-in-the-bum getting it right. Much frustration and swearing involved but, I think, worth it. 

While there was a sketchy few months with all the NDIS paperwork, moving house and other dramas, the latter part of the year was pretty productive and overall, this has been the most successful and busiest year yet. My overall posts stats say 295 posts written, which actually is over 300 as some are scheduled for the week or two ahead, so despite the hit-and-miss few months, I think it has been a pretty fair effort.

Unlike some, I don’t promote the blog as such or push my reviews onto people, but I do share on my own unfashionable SM and, often, the publicists or authors/creators themselves share via their own platforms. But really, it seems to have pretty much just grown organically over the years getting close to 20k visitors this year, exceeding overall previous best stats by a 50% increase.

And it’s always fascinating to me the number and spread of countries from which visitors to the blog are drawn. Unsurprisingly, almost 10k from Australia but 140 different countries altogether. It fascinates me to think that someone from Jersey or Eswatini, North Macedonia or Montenegro, American Samoa or Georgia or anywhere else really might have read and enjoyed one of my reviews. Also, I’m always grateful when the creators respond so kindly to my words for their babies as well, and I am very happy that so many have allowed me into their circles. Their creativity inspires me.

The other fascination is that every year since I first posted it, the review of The Explorer is the most popular post.

The really satisfying thing this year, is that I am now getting more and more commissions to write teaching resources to accompany books which, naturally, as I have less teaching work to do, is both an outlet for my skills and creativity and some additional income.  

As I’ve said before, one lovely bonus is that I get to experience many new and exciting titles, and then can share these with some school libraries who lack a lot of spare $$ for new titles.

For this, I must thank all the wonderful publishers who allow me the privilege of reviewing for them, and now writing supporting notes which are such a help to time-poor teachers, librarians and homeschoolers.

And, of course, I must thank all of you who support this blog. I wish all of you a thoroughly splendid 2024 filled with happy-ness, personal success, new adventures, well-being and satisfaction of all kinds.

It’s always hard to choose favourites but there have been some stand-outs this year. In no particular order:

Impossible Creatures – Katherine Rundell, Silver Linings – Katrina Nannestad, Last Man Out – Louise Park, Being Jimmy Baxter – Fiona Lloyd, My Dream Time – Ash Barty, Becoming Mrs Mulberry – Jackie French, The Edge of Limits – Susanne Gervay, Queenie in Seven Moves – Zanni Louise, Neil the Amazing Sea Cucumber – Amelia McInerney, Honey and the Valley of the Horses – Wendy Orr, Spellhound – Lian Tanner, Scar Town – Tristan Bancks, We Didn’t Think it Through – Gary Lonesborough, Reaching Through Time – Shauna Bostock, Listen– Nicole Godwin/Duncan Smith/Jandamarra Cadd, The Daring Tale of Gloria the Great – Jacqueline Harvey, Tamarra: A story of termites on Gurindji Country – Violet Wadrill, Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal & Leah Leaman, Don’t Dream It’s Over: the remarkable life of Neil Finn – Jeff Apter, Plume: Christmas Elf – Tania McCartney, Eleanor Jones is NOT a Murderer – Amy Doak, Aggie Flea is NOT a Liar – Tania Ingram, Foxlight – Katya Balen, Grandma’s First Tattoo – Phillip Gwynne/Tony Flowers, Secret Sparrow– Jackie French, A Kind of Spark – Elle McNichol, Mr Clownfish, Miss Anemone and the Hermit Crab – Sean E. Avery, Nothing Ever Happens – Heidi McKinnon.

You see what I mean about how hard it is to choose !!! – so many other terrific books I have not listed here, not to mention those I’ve read but not reviewed (Sally Field’s bio In Pieces being a notable example).