After another exciting and busy year, Team Your Kid's Next Read has consulted our brilliant members and compiled book lists based on their recommendations. The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 39,000+ members, connected via our Facebook group, the Your...
Your Kid’s Next Read Faves 2025: Middle Grade
After another exciting and busy year, Team Your Kid's Next Read has consulted our brilliant members and compiled book lists based on their recommendations. The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 39,000+ members, connected via our Facebook group, the Your...
Your Kid’s Next Read Faves 2025: Junior Reads
After another exciting and busy year, Team Your Kid's Next Read has consulted our brilliant members and compiled book lists based on their recommendations. The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 39,000+ members, connected via our Facebook group, the Your...
Your Kid’s Next Read Faves 2025: Chapter Books
After another exciting and busy year, Team Your Kid's Next Read has consulted our brilliant members and compiled book lists based on their recommendations. The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 39,000+ members, connected via our Facebook group, the Your...
Your Kid’s Next Read Faves 2025: Picture Books
Can you believe it's that time again? After another exciting and busy year, Team Your Kid's Next Read has consulted our brilliant members and compiled book lists based on their recommendations. The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 39,000+ members,...
125 books that boys are reading (and loving) right now
Have you seen the headlines? Boys aren't reading. Again. Still? It seems as though the topic of boys and reading flares up in a media tsunami every couple of years and then subsides, and 2025 has definitely been one of those years. In fact, in 2025, we're focused not...
50+ (mostly) new adventure books for kids of all ages
What does adventure mean to you? This year's CBCA Book Week theme is 'Book An Adventure' and it got the Your Kid's Next Read team thinking about the many different types of adventure stories there are – and the many brilliant adventure books for kids out there that...
Let’s talk about ‘Danger Road’
I'm in the middle of preparing author talks and workshops for 'Danger Road', my cold-case crime thriller for middle-grade readers, launching on 1 July. It's always so interesting to sit down and consider exactly where ideas for stories come from and how they go from a...
Romance novels for tweens
Romance is in the air in all aspects of publishing and all over BookTok, and it seems that tween readers can't get enough of it – giving the adults in their lives the tough job of finding age-appropriate reads. The number of requests for recommendations in the Your...
Mystery novels for tweens
I talk a lot about mystery novels for tweens. Whether I'm at school visits or literary festivals or on the Your Kid's Next Read podcast, it's a subject close to my heart – probably because there's usually a mystery, if not at the heart, then not far from it in most of...
WILLOW BRIGHT’S SECRET PLOT is out now!
I could not be more excited to let you know that my new middle-grade novel WILLOW BRIGHT'S SECRET PLOT is out today! Written by me, published by Scholastic Australia, beautiful cover created by Grace Felstead. Isn't it lovely? It's the story of Willow Bright, a...
Introducing DANGER ROAD by A. L. Tait, coming July 2025
It's a big year for A. L Tait in 2025! While I'm busy preparing for the launch of WILLOW BRIGHT'S SECRET PLOT on 1 May, with some exciting events planned for the lead up, the brilliant team from Scholastic Australia has also been busy beavering away to bring you this!...
Order signed copies of A.L. Tait books
It's that time of year when our minds turn to books as gifts! If you're looking for Christmas, end-of-year, graduation, festive season or holiday gifts I'm here to help, with signed copies of any or all A.L. Tait novels awaiting your order! That's right. Signed...
Your Kid’s Next Read Favourites 2024: YA
The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 36,000+ members – and it’s growing every day! Each year, we ask the group to share their young readers’ favourite reads of the previous 12 months. As is the case each year, some of these books were published in 2024,...
Your Kid’s Next Read Favourites 2024: Middle Grade
The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 36,000+ members – and it’s growing every day! Each year, we ask the group to share their young readers’ favourite reads of the previous 12 months. As is the case each year, some of these books were published in 2024,...
Your Kid’s Next Read Favourites 2024: Junior fiction
The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 36,000+ members – and it’s growing every day! Each year, we ask the group to share their young readers’ favourite reads of the previous 12 months. As is the case each year, some of these books were published in 2024,...
Your Kid’s Next Read Favourites 2024: Chapter books
The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 36,000+ members – and it’s growing every day! Each year, we ask the group to share their young readers’ favourite reads of the previous 12 months. As is the case each year, some of these books were published in 2024,...
Your Kid’s Next Read Favourites 2024: Picture books
The Your Kid’s Next Read community now comprises 36,000+ members – and it's growing every day! Each year, we ask the group to share their young readers’ favourite reads of the previous 12 months. As is the case each year, some of these books were published in 2024,...
60+ Family Read-Aloud Novels (recommended by YKNR)
What makes a great family read-aloud novel? "You're looking for something that will appeal to a range of ages, and something that will appeal to the adults as much as it will to the children," says Megan Daley, award-winning teacher-librarian and co-host of the Your...
Celebrating 10 years of The Mapmaker Chronicles
The first book in The Mapmaker Chronicles series turns 10 today. Double figures. A Big Kid by anyone's standards. Ten years ago today, Race To The End Of The World was published – my first experience of the joy and confounding ambivalence of publication day as a...





























