Ten-Minute Blog Break - 8th December

Logo by Melany Pietersen

Although the festive season is upon us, with its over-familiar songs and groups of slightly worse-for-wear office workers stumbling around city centres, our Scoobies are still getting on with the important business of blogging!

As well as the aforementioned Christmas annoyances, we also get Christmas blog features! You can't have missed the illustration advent calendar right here on Words & Pictures, but elsewhere you can check out Space on the Bookshelf's annual A Book in Every Stocking series, and Story Snug are running a picture book advent calendar with recommendations by top writers and illustrators.

If you were at the SCBWI Conference this year, you'll have heard Regional Advisor Natascha Biebow talking on the subject of reading and empathy. In a blog post for Picture Book Den, Natascha expands on her comments with a particular focus on picture books.

How does Sarah McIntyre do it? Although she seemed to be EVERYWHERE this year, it appears she also spent a lot of time actually making stuff, as this round-up of her 2015 book work proves.

Should children's books shy away from discussing contentious and distressing social issues? In a post for Awfully Big Blog Adventure, David Thorpe considers the question.

Finally, a neat post I spotted at Big Little Tales. Katriona Chapman shares her experience of the best way to run an illustration sales table at a craft fair, festival or conference.

Nick.

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Nick Cross is an Undiscovered Voices winner and this year received the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award, for his short story The Last Typewriter.

Click here to read Nick's latest blog post for Notes from the Slushpile.