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 the next adventure, story or world has never left me; it chased me into adulthood and still takes up huge swathes of my time. For me, there’s a childlike joy in being able to abandon reality and curl up within the pages of another world – […]

  • 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  muddy-brown moggy with one white foot and a white ear. Generally he  favoured a dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards approach to coiffure,  but he had – in fact – only had fleas once and was perfectly clean.  ’Have you always been able to talk?’ she asked.  Fleabags paused with his […]

  • 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, in the UK, the number of children from age eight to 18 who read is at an all time low. Since the increased use of mobile devices in our society, fewer young people choose to read over online activities, as it can be perceived as boring […]

  • 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 for leaving- a conversation about wellbeing is essential. I think the key to good wellbeing in education is not a huge change in routine but small considered changes that can build to make a big change. Lots of small steps can make a big difference. With […]

  • 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), Stephen King (Fairy Tale), or, as she is known here in the shop, Queen Maggie (The Marriage Portrait), we’re always trying to second guess what is going to be on our customers’ must buy lists. For now, though, I’m still very much in Summer mode writing this […]

  • 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 WBD events we are always left with extra stock. We have found some good uses for them over the years but the latest is maybe the best – a link with the local library service who take books into prisons. For children, the occasional visit to […]