Children’s Books

  • Giving Children the Freedom to Choose Their Next Story

    Guest writer Brogan Tuxford, Primary School Teacher at St Mary’s School for Girls I was an avid reader as a child. I went to Narnia and to Hogwarts. I travelled back in time to solve mysteries and visited places far, far away (places that I now understand may not actually exist!). The pursuit of discovering […]

  • Christmas in Colchester: “Surprising Mrs B” – the story continues

    This is the conclusion to a story published in Christmas in Colchester 2025 magazine. If you would like to read the story from the beginning, click here. Otherwise the story continues here: ….After tea, Cally lay on her bed digesting and scrutinising Fleabags, who  was sitting beside her cleaning himself vigorously. He was a long-haired  […]

  • Is Colchester an anomaly in the decline of young readers?

    This article was written by Lily Locke, one of the Newsquest Young Reporters, a scheme that gives 14 to 18-year-old school students a chance to write for a real newspaper. Find out more at the Young Reporter website.   Is Colchester an anomaly in the decline of young readers? A recent Guardian article reported that, […]

  • How Small Changes Can Make A Big Difference to Teachers

    Blog post by author Michelle Auton In teaching there is always so much to do, so why do we want to be worrying about wellbeing as well? With over a fifth of teachers leaving the profession in the first two few years of their career and stress and workload being cited as the main reasons […]

  • Back to School

    I’ve just had a conversation with Jo, the manager here at Red Lion, where the C word was mentioned. How is it not even the end of Summer and we’re talking about Christmas? But that’s how the pages turn in a bookshop, we’re always looking ahead. Whether it’s the new Kate Atkinson (Shrines of Gaiety), […]

  • World Book Day Books and children of fathers in prison

    As enthusiastic supporters of World Book Day we are involved with several local schools and always tend to order too many copies of each yearly crop of fantastic WBD titles. After all, the last thing we ever want to do is to run out! It does mean that after the dust has settled on the […]