My Four Favourite Hashtags Of The Week

Well, this has been an interesting, and incredibly up and down, three and a half days. I'll potentially write more about other stuff at some point - I'm not ignoring it, as you can tell if you saw my Twitter feed last night - but wanted to concentrate on positive stuff and highlight three AMAZING hashtags.

#ckg15 is following the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, with nominated books being announced yesterday. There are tons of prizes for YA and children's books out there, with varying purposes, and I'm really looking forward to the new YA book prize which was recently announced. However the long history of these two medals means that they're really something special, and it's been wonderful to see so many fantastic books nominated for them. I linked to reviews of ones I've read yesterday here but also, after being disappointed by the lack of funny books last year wanted to say I was particularly thrilled that the stunning Boys Don't Knit by TS Easton, one of my favourite comedies of the year, is on there. Also lots of humour in many others, especially Trouble, Pea's Book of Holidays and Murder Most Unladylike. I'm hoping to read some of the others, but it'll take something special to displace Bone Jack from my heart - I've been desperate for this to win ever since I first read it several months ago. (Quick update - also really impressed by the speed at which the Carnegie organisers dealt with concerns over illustrated novels like Oliver and the Seawigs and Fortunately, The Milk being nominated and credit given only to the writer rather than the illustrator - update on that situation here on Sarah McIntyre's excellent blog.)

Twitter user and author Ava Jae started up a spontaneous hashtag #Authoryes to say thank you to the wonderful authors who've supported the blogging community, both this weekend and in general. I'm already sure I've missed some brilliant people out when tweeting so I won't compound the error by even attempting a list of authors I'm grateful for here (especially with only 45 minutes of my lunch break left!) Do scroll back through the hashtag, though, to see a huge amount of love being spread. Even more so people started using #bloggeryes to praise bloggers as well!

Even better, though, this morning saw the reveal of the cover for Lisa Williamson's stunning The Art of Being Normal and the eagerly-anticipated #WhatIsNormalFlashMob. This is an amazing campaign for a stunning, and important book. Anyone who's a fan of thoughtful books and wants to read about diverse characters should absolutely pre-order it now. As well, it's been incredible to see so many people change their Twitter avatars to the cover - including people connected to other publishers! It's reminded me just how incredibly supportive of each other the community as a whole is. Of course, even though the book is fantastic and Lisa is AMAZING, the other reason it's getting so many tweets and RTs, even from people who haven't read, is just how truly gorgeous the cover is! Fab work from Ness Wood designing and Alice Todd illustrating! Head over to Twitter to see if you agree that it is utterly amazing.