UK and/or MG Blog Recs?

[rj_anderson]

Bet you thought I was going to tweet everything from here on... it's tempting, if only because it's so convenient and demands so little time. But I do remember that I have a proper blog, honest. It's just that I'm pretty swamped right now, with less than two weeks to go until my deadline to hand in Wayfarer and lots of revision yet to be done.

I have a question, though. I've noticed that there seems to be a definite imbalance in the book-related blogs and feeds I'm subscribed to. The majority of them seem highly centered on Young Adult/Teen content and seldom if ever talk about Middle Grade books. I've also noticed that the reviewers I've friended all seem to skew toward the US market, with little or no input from the UK/Aus/NZ side of things.

So, for those of you more firmly established in the MG world and/or located elsewhere in the Commonwealth, what are your favorite MG and/or UK publishing-centric book blogs?

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't know that we (in the UK) have a 'middle grade' category, actually. We certainly don't have the equivalent in the school system, and while I don't work in publishing, I would have tended to class things as 'infants', 'children' and 'teen'/ YA.

[newport2newport.livejournal.com]

I write mainly for grown-ups, so I'm no help, am I? But I totally get what you're saying...there's an abundance of YA authors on LJ, but very few who write for a younger or older audience. I guess it's up to us to bring new bloggers into the fold. :)

Confession time: I don't understand Twitter-speak (tweets?). *feels old*

[sarah-prineas.livejournal.com]

bookbag.co.uk

Erm.... other than that, I dunno. But you're right about the skew. YA is cooler than MG.

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

I read Cedar's blog from her library, but she is mainly a YA librarian and I don't think middle grade books come up as often in her posts. But I'm not actually sure. I would think she could point you in the right direction as far as blogs are concerned. Try asking her?

[kerravonsen]

There are two things I find not-so-good about Twitter:
1) you get posts at the end of the day about things that happened at the beginning of the day which would have been more comprehensible if they'd been posted when they happened
2) a number of your posts have been like one half of a conversation, and I go "Huh? What's she talking about?"

[tezmilleroz.livejournal.com]

There's http://tezmilleroz.wordpress.com where I post book stuff. Australian-based, but more adult and YA than MG. I make sure to track down UK and Australian release dates when I can.

Have a lovely day! :-)

Waves Aged Person Stick

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

I still haven't quite figured out twitter. For values of "haven't quite" = "no useful level"

I've never felt so old...

Re: Waves Aged Person Stick

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

There's not much to it. Basically just a lazy way to update people on what you're doing/thinking while on the run -- 140 characters at a time. But for someone who's too busy to sit down and type out a proper LJ post, and who wants to keep up with other people who are also too busy to post properly at the moment, it's pretty fun.

Publishers and libraries are using tweets as headlines to point people to blog posts and articles of interest, as well -- and some are even using them for humor and parody purposes, like halfpintingalls (http://twitter.com/halfpintingalls) which purports to post tweets from, well, you know:

3:52 pm: Ma says I should wear my corset so a man can span my waist with his two hands. I say if he wants to so badly he can GROW ANOTHER HAND.

11:49 pm: Nellie laughs because a kitten crawled up in my hoopskirt. Hope a big family of muskrats goes up HER dress & spends the Long Winter there.

You get the idea. :)