The Little Bookroom is excited to host the popular night for Teachers, Librarians, Home-Schoolers, Parents, or any other grown-up interested in what books are being published that tick curriculum boxes or could engage young readers on any number of topics!

Book Chat is a casual, entertaining, but enlightening night.

6pm for a 6:30 start (browse the shelves before we kick off)
Michael will lead a special guest in a Q&A/Discussion about their latest release and how it's a perfect fit for schools and libraries - be it in the classroom, or to promote to students for their free-choice reading.
We take a short comfort break.
Michael takes us, rapid-fire, through some of the recent releases that might pique the interest of the Education Sector, focusing on local publishing and quality reads.

TERM 2 SPECIAL GUEST:

Karen Comer

A new YA book from the author of the award-winning YA novel Grace Notes, Once Upon Tomorrow is a stunning verse novel about three girls in different times whose lives weave together.

Karen has extensive knowledge in verse novels and often runs professional development sessions for teachers and librarians as well as workshops aimed at young writers. She'll be talking to us not just about her own work, but other stand out verse novels and how they can be used in schools to the greatest engagement.

About the book:

Three girls. Three fates. Three interwoven stories. Spanning a hundred years from the present to the future, three girls on the cusp of life search for truth and connection amid family dysfunction, climate change and the march of new technology in this exquisite verse novel from the award-winning author of Grace Notes.

Miri, an eighteen-year-old hopeful Jungian student, discovers she's pregnant in 2025.
Aleita, sixteen, shelters in the library, the one place free of jolts to her digital implant in 2125.
Interwoven between them stands Sylvie, spinning tapestries to save her life and the kingdom. Sylvie exists in the pages of a mysterious fairytale titled The Girl at the Threshold.

Miri, Aleita and Sylvie each need to make a choice in their search for the truth. All three are connected through time by heartbreak, a desperate need to save the environment and a search for family and community.
An expansive verse novel about the parallel journeys of three extraordinary girls carving out their own histories - and each other's.

About Karen:

Karen Comer is a freelance editor and presents writing workshops to children and adults. Earlier in her career, she worked in educational publishing and was the editor for children's art magazine BIG. She lives in Melbourne. Karen's debut novel, Grace Notes, published in 2023, was awarded the 2024 CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers, was shortlisted for the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature, shortlisted for the 2024 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and is shortlisted for the 2024 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult Literature.

Contact the host of Secondary Book Chat with Karen Comer