What a Great Year to be a Blogger!

Happy Birthday to A Year of Reading! We are one year old today! What a great year it's been! We feel very lucky to be part of an amazing group of kid lit bloggers! We have so many people to thank--people who have made the kidlitosphere such fun!

We can use the term "kidlitosphere" thanks to Melissa's post at Here in the Bonny Glen when she invented it in June. It hit big and fast and was picked up by Wands and Worlds and made official by Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy. As of today's post, the word gets 538 Google hits when searched! Thanks Melissa!

Here are some other highlights from 2006!

In JANUARY, we had no idea what we were doing. So, there was probably a lot of great stuff going on but we totally missed it all!

In FEBRUARY, Betsy at Fuse#8 revealed her first Hot Men in Children's Literature which has become quite the tradition! Aside from her great book reviews and her knowledge of what is going on in the children's book world, the Hot Men are another fun thing to look forward to regularly from Fuse #8.

Also in FEBRUARY, Kelly at Big A, Little a published the first issue of The Edge of the Forest! This has been a great monthly online journal that we all look forward to!

In MARCH, Gregory K at GottaBook started to share his ODDAPTATAIONS which have been quite fun to read and try!

Poetry Friday was also instituted in MARCH! So many of us participate in that each Friday. Thanks, Kelly!

In APRIL, Gregory shared his first Fib which have also become something we all look forward to on his blog.

In MAY, Mother Reader issued the 48-Hour Book Challenge. We did not notice this until it was well under way. (We had just discovered Mother Reader and became quickly addicted!). We were VERY disappointed about not participating but we are anxiously awaiting the 2007 Book Challenge as well as any other contests that Mother Reader devises!

Read Roger was the first kid-lit blog that we discovered! He hooked us into the blogging world and connected us to so many of our other favorites! In JUNE, Read Roger let us know that Nina, of Nina's Newbery would be the 2008 Chair of the Newbery Committee. Since our blog started out as a way to think about the Newbery, we were very excited to start reading Nina's blog!

In JUNE, Jen Robinson had the great idea to compile a list of Cool Girls in Children's Literature and Cool Boys in Children's Literature. What great lists! She inspired many of us to start our own lists. In JULY, we started collecting our list of 100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature. The Bookdragon compiled a list of Librarians in Children's Literature. Jen started a great trend and the kidlitosphere created some popular lists!


In AUGUST, we celebrated Blogday when we got tagged by A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozywith a blogday meme . We participated along with many other bloggers everywhere!

In August, Rick Riordan posted about summer reading and got many of us thinking and writing about that topic.


In SEPTEMBER, Educating Alice became one of our new beloved blogs and shared with us her thoughts about naming a blog .

In OCTOBER, BookBuds and Big A little a unveiled the CYBILS and Children's Literature Book Club created the logo. So many of us have had such a great time talking about the great books published in 2006 and the publishers have been very supportive. Thanks to Anne and Kelly.

In NOVEMBER, Amy at the SLJ Blog interviewed us for her blog!

We also attempted our first author interview in NOVEMBER with Ralph Fletcher.

DECEMBER was an exciting month!
3 Silly Chicks revealed the winner of their caption contest. We are still laughing and are amazed at how many clever entries there were! We had fun following the contest. More exciting news when author Mo Willems started a blog!!

Thanks, everyone! We've had a fun time blogging with all of you! Looking forward to our 2nd year:-)
Franki and Mary Lee