iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sean @seangill.net · 14/06/2026

Working on some new #microfiction this week. Don’t often do #genre #writing but dabbling in #horror today.

Sean @seangill.net · 12/06/2026

Been reading a lot of very experienced, thoughtful voices on the subject of what #kidlit ought to be. Trying to weigh that against my kid’s top 5 #picturebooks has left me deeply agnostic. It seems clear that her ideal contains images and words. And, to rabble-rouse, didactics.

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Sean @seangill.net · 12/06/2026

Would MAKE BELIEVE have been published if written by anyone but Barnett? Would it have been attention worthy or even reviewed if anyone else wrote it? Both nos, for me, which gets to the heart of the matter: power and canon formation.

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Sean @seangill.net · 11/06/2026

I haven’t taken a #food pic since my FPO, I think. So, here goes nothing. Carnitas #tacos with homemade tortillas, a salsa verde of tomatillos and roasted jalapeños, and a roasted jalapeño and goat cheese crema. My little is a pro with the tortilla press!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 10/06/2026

To quote Tom Waits: “It’s time.” Time to hit us up with your favorite summer #kidlit. What’re you and your kid #reading when the mercury bursts through the thermometer and the pool feels like you’re becoming part of a Low Country boil? 📷: our three-year-old. #picturebook #kidlitart #booksky

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Sean @seangill.net · 05/06/2026

Books following a subscription model is old tech, for sure. Besides those sized in gelatin, printed on vellum, or bound in leather, though, books don’t contain much if any protein. That‘s a market ready for disruption! #booksky #books #nerdhumor

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Sean @seangill.net · 31/05/2026

Things don’t have to be this way.

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Sean @seangill.net · 29/05/2026

A gentle reminder that ours is, unequivocally, the best of all possible worlds.

A tray displaying many rubber ducks whose upper bodies nightmarishly take the shape of golden retrievers or yellow labs wearing American flag bandanas. Each has a price tag labeling them as rubber ducks for $4.99

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Sean @seangill.net · 28/05/2026

I once worked for a grocery chain that fired all of its butchers in favor of prepackaged. Later, when sales plummeted, it hired them back for more money—sometimes more than the store manager. They did this twice, ultimately keeping butchers at most stores. This isn’t a post about meat.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 28/05/2026

Want your own TTS #swag? It's not available on our website (yet), but if you message Addy's great-aunt, and her Cricut is working, she'll maybe send you one! Seriously though, how #cute is this? Addy loves to lug her weekly #libraryhaul around in it! She's pretty sure it's her on the front.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 24/05/2026

Addy doesn't expect to win the #Caldecott AND #Newberry, but you can definitely expect her to be in the conversation. A #toddler #rainyday #craft--The Snowman with Great Hair hits finer booksellers in a classic stab-stitched quarto this summer with a vellum folio available for holiday #giftgiving

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Sean @seangill.net · 24/05/2026

Been thinking a lot about Ghân-buri-Ghân and the arterial clotting of knowledge systems in #lotr as a way of understanding the needs of our own AI moment. I’ve also been relishing the basics of washing, cutting, grinding.

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Sean @seangill.net · 23/05/2026

#rainyday #crafts! Momma, dada, grammy, little, and cousins—vote for your favorite! #parenting #kids #art #artwork #artsandcrafts

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Sean @seangill.net · 22/05/2026

Just a little #GretaPosting Sometimes she's a big #dog. Sometimes she isn't. It's never really clear why. Always the best girl though! #dogsofbluesky #adoptdontshop #petphotography

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Sean @seangill.net · 21/05/2026

Today will be rainy and cool, a sharp contrast to the frankly frightening heatwave that cornered us for the past week—thus begins the finger crossing that our local farm will announce berry picking has opened! It was our favorite family activity last year. Cross along with us, #bluesky!

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Sean @seangill.net · 20/05/2026

Wild that I spent all this time becoming a doctor only to be limited to prescribing grammar. (I won’t do that.)

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 20/05/2026

NEW EPISODE DROP! Join us tomorrow for our discussion on the second-ever Caldecott award winner, Thomas Handforth’s Mei Li—a real triumph of lithography! Class starts at 6AM EST! www.ToddlingTheStacks.com to watch or your podcatcher of choice! #kidlit #kidlitart #booksky #picturebook #podcast

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 18/05/2026

Morning! Enjoy your daily #earlyreader contraband. Grandma Lena’s Big Ol’ Turnip is a wonderful way to get ready for #gardening season! #kidlit #parenting

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Sean @seangill.net · 17/05/2026

Somehow just started the #Gormenghast novels. The amount of atmosphere in the first 15 pages makes my Victorian heart happy—but intensely at odds with the sunny, 90°F weather outside my window. I truly haven’t read for pleasure in years. Might I have your #scifi and #fantasy suggestions?

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Sean @seangill.net · 13/05/2026

My little’s first year of #preschool is ending and I’m faced with the #teacher gift dilemma. They’ve been so tremendous that it’s hard to imagine they won’t be with her anymore! What should we get/make them to show our appreciation but not bog them down with stuff? #endofyear

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Sean @seangill.net · 12/05/2026

Wasps are also responsible for the Oak galls from which we had iron gall ink. Huge fans of bureaucracy, wasps.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 12/05/2026

Another from our #libraryhaul, THE GIFT OF RAMADAN. Out of season, but Addy gets a pick every week, and she knocked this one out of the park! Awesome reminder for kids that it’s great to aim for the fences but ok to fall short. What did the #library serve up for you today? #kidbooks #BeAnAmbassador

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Sean @seangill.net · 09/05/2026

Printers for the first, y’know, 600 years or so: “book sizes will be based on how many times you fold the printing paper.” 20 & 21C Children’s book printers: “every book will be a different size. Maybe even in the same print run—we don’t know. If you see a quarto or duodecimo, it’s a fakeeeeee”

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 09/05/2026

#Libraryhaul! Addy brought home 12 #picturebooks this week. FISH FRY FRIDAY is an early fave! An incredibly endearing day with gmom—incl. recipes!—but the illustrations. Gah. I guess photography is technically “writing with light” but look at the light here! The movement! #BeAnAmbassador #kidlit

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Sean @seangill.net · 08/05/2026

“Stunning AI filters for mom!”—a real advert I just received—seems likely to be the thing the satellites beam one another over Greenhouse Earth this time of year on Anthropocene’s completion.

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Sean @seangill.net · 07/05/2026

There’s something frankly Borgesian about the number of burners in Pati Jinich’s kitchen.

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Anne Ursu @anneursu.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

It's weird to watch people to post and enthusiastically endorse the national ambassador's comment that nearly 95% of kidlit is crud (lol so true!), and then when people get upset, say that the quote was taken out of context.

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Sean @seangill.net · 06/05/2026

On this, apparently national teacher day in the states, I want to thank all the teachers who literally saved my life growing up. I come from a deeply broken home mired by poverty, abuse, and untreated mental illness. Today, I have 3 degrees from two Ivy League universities. 1/

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Sean @seangill.net · 04/05/2026

if my little develops a secret dwarf language known only to herself, she won’t tell anyone. but there will be signs. #tolkien #booksky

A food service container filled with alphabet pasta is labeled with black marker on scotch tape in a childlike hand that resembles runes.

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