Dear Reader,

Less noise, more words

Six weeks ago I made a snap decision to get off Instagram. I didn’t brick up the doorway, the way I’ve quit every other social media, but only locked myself out. I expected the cravings to be severe but evidently my brain needed peace more than dopamine.

Naturally I miss what my peers are posting, the camaraderie, the industry chatter, the cover reveals; and I’m slightly uneasy with this new state of not knowing things. But this year my drive to do things differently has been strong and Instagram is its latest victim. I expect that I will return to catch up, but hope I can exit again as decisively. I’m better out here.

It puts extra pressure on this newsletter. A single means for an author to connect, talk books and writing, and share the odd bird photo. (Regarding the latter, a spring arrival awaits you at the end.)

While we’re talking social media

If you were on Twitter in 2021 it’s likely you caught wind of the intense criticism faced by British poet and teacher Kate Clanchy over her Orwell Prize-winning memoir about teaching poetry in UK state schools, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, and the counter-criticism faced by some of Clanchy’s detractors. The criticism was over Clanchy’s damaging white-gaze approach to representing her students in the book, which kicked off when Clanchy decided to feed Twitter a Goodreads review that she claimed misquoted and misrepresented her.

Two things readers of this newsletter will be interested in:

A recent BBC article: Publisher apologises to author Kate Clanchy four years after book controversy. The reason this caught my attention is not because I don’t think Clanchy’s book deserved criticism but because I don’t think publishers should be allowed to morally distance themselves from the books they produce and profit from. One thing that stood out to me when Jamie Oliver’s children’s book was criticised for its damaging stereotyping and trivialising of First Nations’ history and belief systems was the fact that his publisher, Penguin, took responsibility for it, as they should. That should not be reserved for rich celebrities. Down with turncoat behaviour, spin and slipperiness from publishers.

The BBC podcast: Anatomy of a Cancellation is a 7-episode deep-dive on Kate Clanchy, her book, her publisher, her supporters and her detractors.

Why You Should Read This Tessa Hadley Short Story, Even Though You Are So Old & Wise(Subtitle borrowed and edited from the essay about children’s literature by Katherine Rundell.)

We talk about one of the barriers to children becoming readers being the adults in their lives who have no interest in reading themselves. But keen adult readers may also inadvertently cause a barrier, by imposing a finely-tuned reading belief system on a child who is yet to discover their own.

Her Share of Sorrow by Tessa Hadley is a short story about a discontented teenager discovering reading, and then writing, and the way that the commentary of her well-read, middle-class, artistic family is misplaced. The precision and astuteness here is stunning. As well as being a sensitively told story, it’s a reminder that we need to make reading and writing available and vital to young people without being over-bearing gatekeepers.

This weekend I had the pleasure of reading the latest from South Australian novelist Allayne L. Webster. Maisy Hayes Is Not For Sale feels like old-school YA in the sense that Maisy is only 14 and her homelife is not exactly coming up roses. Maisy’s mum has a lot on her plate and a low income — the kind that means no school trips, an insecure food supply, and constant worry — while her dad is rich, interstate, and disinterested. Maisy’s big sister has a heart condition, her little brother is frequently under the care of the next-door neighbour, and Maisy’s in the middle, her anger quietly coming to the boil. This novel has the high energy, wit and passion of all of the author’s work, and gives the reader a warts-and-all portrait of financial and emotional insecurity while maintaining Maisy’s natural innocence.

We need stories about the diversity of working-class lives. According to statistics, 1 in 6 Australian children aged 0-14 live in poverty, about the same as the USA. Distressingly, I found a 1 in 3 stat for the UK.

A final note on this theme: I encourage you to read the latest post by Your Kid’s Next Read, Australian kidlit’s most widely-read Substack, by teacher-librarian and author Megan Daley, and authors AL Tait and Allison Rushby, on giving books to children this festive season.

‘We talk a lot about this,’ says Allison Tait, co-host of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast. ‘The idea that kids who like reading are given books all the time – and that’s great – but if you self-identify early on as a non-reader, for whatever reason, people stop giving you books. But if we treat every kid as a reader, if we make sure there is always a book handy, then we give them the opportunity to change their minds.’

What I’ve been reading, writing, and listening to

I’ve had a good run lately. I told you last month that my writing group is reading all the Jane Austens — we’re up to Mansfield Park. And there was a treat to coincide with our reading of Pride and Prejudice: this wonderfully comprehensive and well-written Substack post on P&P adaptations:

It's All About the Words by Claire HoldenPride and Prejudice: a fine (eyed) romanceThere is simply so much to say about Pride and Prejudice that I’ve split my thoughts across two essays—the first concentrates on Austen’s novel, and today we’re going to be diving deep into the many and varied screen adaptations…Read morea month ago · 55 likes · 45 comments · Claire Holden

I’m always looking for long-form investigative podcasts that understand the nuances of good storytelling, and this month I was hooked on the West Cork Podcast. It’s about the unsolved murder of a French woman, Sophie Toscan du Plantier, in West Cork, Ireland, which happened in 1996, and the aftermath for Sophie’s family, the town, and the Englishman accused early on, who was never convicted in Ireland, widely believed to have done it, and refused to leave the town.

I loved this short piece by Harriet Armstrong in Granta magazine about the use of lol in messages: Lol I’m trying to tell you how it feels for me. I’m an infrequent lol user but big on haha and, as this writer confesses, I use it in a number of ways, not always in genuine humour but also as a defence against being too openly vulnerable. See what you think.

Favourite novel this month was Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which never fails me. It’s about a British-Palestinian actress who goes to Haifa, where she has not been since the Second Intifada, to visit her sister. She finds herself recruited into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. It’s set in 2017.

I also loved Seascraper by Benjamin Wood, longlisted for the Booker, which is a short novel set over a couple of days in a fictional coastal town in England where a young man works as a cart shanker, dragging for shrimps, but secretly dreams of being a songwriter. If you’re looking for a Claire Keegan / Small Things Like These type of hit, Seascraper is a good bet.

My other notable read was Margaret Drabble’s The Middle Ground, which is about professional forty-year-olds in North London in the late 1970s having a midlife crisis. It was published in 1980, and what I found astonishing was the familiar ground covered: the reputed dangers of cities, generational differences, class inequality, intellectual snobbery, the sandwich generation, the menopause, Palestine, Russia, interference in the Middle East, racism, feminism, gender constraints, it was all there, the only difference being that people had to rush to answer their rotary-style telephones, they read physical newspapers, and no one was wearing a fitbit. Perhaps we think things change more than they do.

Writing! I almost forgot. Yes, I’ve been doing lots of that. I’ll soon be copy-editing my middle-grade novel set in the near future, which will be in stores at the end of April 2026, and called (you are the first to hear it) The Wild Unknown. Cover coming soon, and again, you’ll see it here first.

Coming next month

Last December I came up with a way to combine my two loves, books and birds, by attempting to pair 10 of my most memorable reads of 2024 with 10 of my bird photos. This project began the way most of my projects do: I saw a single possibility, got over-excited and committed to it, and then worked away through panic and despair until I finished the puzzle and exhaled with relief.

Here’s last year’s effort:

And here’s a taste of this year’s books and birds puzzle, pairing the Women’s Prize Shortlisted Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout with a Little Pied Cormorant demanding, in no uncertain terms, that you Tell Her Everything!

Finally

This soggy parent-and-child Tawny Frogmouth is how everyone in Victoria feels right now with the endless spring rain. I’ve been visiting this nest almost daily. The parent tries to keep the chick warm in the brood patch, so it’s very entertaining watching it peek out and constantly fidget, trying to make a break for it.

Thank you for reading Voracious .

If you enjoy this newsletter and you’d like to support me in some way, I’d love it if you’d consider leaving a review of one of my books or sharing this with a friend.

I’ve worked in the children’s book industry for 25 years in various roles: in-house editor, consultant to a literary agent, children’s book buyer, reviewer, freelance manuscript assessor, and as a writer-in-residence in a high school library. My writing includes the Young Adult novels Girl, Aloud (2009), Steal My Sunshine (2013) and I Am Out With Lanterns (2018). For late primary/early high school readers: The Other Side of Summer (2016 ; a companion novel to I Am Out With Lanterns ) and Aussie Stem Stars: Gisela Kaplan (2021). Eliza Boom’s Diary books 1 & 2 (2014) are for emerging readers aged 5-9. My latest novels are Elsewhere Girls (2021) and Outlaw Girls (2024), with Nova Weetman, and The Goodbye Year (2022), for readers aged 10+. My next middle-grade novel will be published in May 2026.

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