For something that occupied such a huge chunk of our lives, for ten years in fact, "Read It, Daddy!" is still one of the things I think both of us are extremely proud of. It's also something I think about a lot, mostly because life has a habit of moving so quickly, and memories (particularly when you're my age) seem to fade at the same pace.
One year on from the closure of our blog, we all still talk about books, read books and love books. The steady stream of review copies has all but dried up (mostly because we purposely asked to be removed from people's physical and virtual mailing lists) but unsurprisingly we do still get review requests and a few complimentary copies of books from a few folk (which is actually a very lovely thing that we hugely appreciate). Though we don't review them, we do try to take the time to mention the good stuff on Twitter, and sometimes my daughter opts to review them on her own blog too.
There's been a lot of discussion on Twitter lately from book bloggers who are thinking of giving up reviewing books. One made me smile, someone who'd opted to give up after a mere few months of blogging, not realising that most blogs don't find their feet for years. Striking a balance between working your socks off to keep your content fresh, but also expecting to build an audience in an almost meme-like fashion with just a few posts really isn't what book blogging is about, and nor should it be. If you're doing it for the clicks, the numbers, the free books or some sort of infamy or kudos, you're doing it for all the wrong reasons.
Reviewing children's books is partially about being fair and complimentary to the creative efforts on all sides, but also gently (politely) calling out those processes when they don't quite pan out the way they perhaps should. But always with one thing in mind. This is your opinion (or in our case my daughter's / my opinion) and should never be rammed down anyone else's throat as an ultimate solution to any perceived problems or shortcomings you feel are prevalent in children's publishing or the creative processes surrounding it.
Children's publishing is a huge global business, and it's there to make colossal amounts of cash (quite often at the mental and monetary expense of creatives themselves). Being critical and fair when reviewing books means constantly adjusting that balance, tweaking and tuning it to a point where there is actually an opinion in each article, rather than just a "Yeah we like this because we got it for free" waste of space article. Following the patterns adopted by most influencers won't cut it in book blogging, so merely looking like a million dollars and tastefully Bookstagramming your preview copies amongst a lovely case of flowers and a steaming cup of hot chocolate is about as original as writing a children's story about a cute bunny who goes on an adventure, and likely to only garner the sort of cliquey audience that only follows / reblogs you so you'll do the same for them.
We definitely called things to a close at the right time. I'd originally planned to call it a day after a million hits on the blog (which we passed sometime back in 2018) or when the blog got to its tenth anniversary. We opted for the latter and it was definitely a good place to finish things as the pandemic began to take full effect, my health started to take a turn for the worse and C's own taste in books and reviewing evolved way beyond the blog's scope.
As expected, we caused a tiny ripple in the world of children's literature as most bloggers do, but that ripple has now all but disappeared. Sometimes I miss the involvement with the whole business, I definitely miss that regular interaction with lovely creative folk (some of whom have stayed twitter buddies and still hit up my timelines from time to time, and gawd do I ever appreciate that!) and of course I miss being invited to all those book launches and events that I never quite got round to attending when we were a 'thing'.
So looking at kidlit through the same critical eye today, I can see that it's still an amazing thing to be involved in, even on the periphery. It's genuinely wonderful to see other bloggers catching their first publishing deals with their own stories, seeing their first books hit the shelves, being able to say to yourself "Hey, I know that person! That person rocks!" - Yeah, that's a good feeling.
But we could never come back to it, we as in my daughter and I - and I couldn't do it alone because, let's face it, no one wants to read some old bloke's opinion on kidlit. But in some ways it's actually a blessed relief not to be perusing and juggling a spreadsheet working out a month's reviews in advance, or coping with the flurry of parcel post that would descend on us every day. We worked hard, all of us did (including my wife) to establish a tiny nook in the world of book blogging, and that's really what it takes and I still feel that the effort is vastly underestimated by those who take the 'influencer' tack into book blogging, and definitely underappreciated by those who feel a back-of-the-book cover quote from The Sun newspaper along the lines of "A delight!" is better than a book blogger's cautious, thoughtful and appreciative insight.
Some of the folk we knew and loved are still in there kicking ass with their reviews, new folk have appeared and are similarly loving books in the same way we did as a dad and daughter team, and all in all it's nice to still see the books, those beautiful books, wowing everyone and achieving that all important goal, turning kids into book lovers for life. We still do our small part, passing on review copies to good causes, local schools and libraries and that's still one of the best feelings in the world.
Our social media feeds are quietly trickling along still, though we don't always actively take part in discussions (from time to time though I'll stick my nose into a conversation about some aspect of kidlit or comics, purely because it still interests me) but a tiny part of me has two regrets, I never got published (and I'm not likely to) and I never managed to turn a love of books into a proper writing gig.
One year on, life's too short for regrets and there's a lot of other stuff going on that's nicely filled the gap left by ReadItDaddy, though I genuinely doubt that we'll ever entirely shake our association with the blog and why would we ever want to? We're hugely proud of it as I said at the top of this article, and there's always something new to learn, new to do, and if anything I still think that all those years ago it was a brilliant idea to get into book blogging.
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