iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 25/08/2026

Season #2 of our Podcast launches next week. We needed time to prepare for this semester and imagine brave new hyperbole to throw at you! In the meantime, Friends of Desoto will surely appreciate today's library coloring sheet! @greatesttrek.com @benjaminahr.mobi #kidLit #inJokes #DS9

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 24/08/2026

Definitely! Ive had to dial things back to get a syllabus together quickly but should be back to normal next week!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 23/08/2026

Thanks! Thrilled to not have to sit this semester out (and thrilled to be able to avoid stitching together multiple part time jobs).

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 23/08/2026

A lot of people think their country is the best, but, if we’re being objective, the new puppy is at best an ok Dane. #dogsofbluesky #puppy #parentlife #dog

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 20/08/2026

We want to try that, too! If it works—and everyone swears it does—maybe we’ll do a plant or two more next year.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 20/08/2026

Some #forkToTable from my little’s #learningGarden. Homegrown basil, tomatoes, zucchini. The polenta and pasta were not, in fact, homegrown. 😂 #toddlerLife #girlDad #parenting #vegetarian

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 19/08/2026

Beyond thrilled to announce that, against all odds this late in the year, I have found a landing spot and will be teaching as Dr. Gill for the first time!

Gandalf the White stares at the camera announcing “I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.”

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Greg Pincus @gregpincus.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I ran into this online snd thought about how our childhood reading stays with us #kidlitchat

A tshirt with Liwly Worm in a Scarry apple car saying “you got a fast car. I got a plan to get us out if here.”

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 19/08/2026

Get out of my head 😂! Jaws the book often comes out at the beach. It’s, uh, not without its problems. But a great beach read! #kidlitchat

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 19/08/2026

This absolute banger of a picture book. Genuinely terrifying. #kidlitchat

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 19/08/2026

I can see the cover of Jekyll & Hyde in this series clearly in my mind! #kidlitchat

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 19/08/2026

I’ve read LOTR more times than I should probably admit. But depending on the age cutoff: Dracula, Blatty’s Exorcist, and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. A little later, King’s IT. Perhaps a little unexpectedly, Buber’s I and Thou—but these were later, into high school. #kidlitchat

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 18/08/2026

Can you name the #picturebook from these three images? Note: they’re not from the book itself—that’d be a giveaway—they’re just descriptive of it! #kidlit #booksky

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 18/08/2026

Along with cyclospora and salmonella, we’re apparently no longer checking the expiration date on fortune cookies, either.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 18/08/2026

please know I didn’t want to do this but *clears throat* 🎶 THERE ARE SOME THAT CAN PICK UP RECYCLINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG 🚛🗑️ #parenting #earworm #yourewelcome #toddlerlife

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 18/08/2026

It wasn’t until I zoomed in that I noticed the cinder block walls. That’s an achievement right there. Thanks for your service and good luck this year!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 17/08/2026

Y'know Robert Lawson, who illustrated Ferdinand among other greats? He won a Caldecott in 1941, for a book that looks to demonstrate how his ancestors made America a proud nation by...fighting for the Confederacy? Listen Here: apple.co/463masC #EduSky #BookSky #KidLit #CivilWar #PictureBook

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 17/08/2026

“Your child will never have to go to therapy… for the same reasons you do.“ —my therapist. #kidlit #parenting #fairytales #booksky #girldad

A nightstand with a potted plant beside it contains three books stacked atop one another: a compendium of Victorian fairy tales; the Princeton UP Grimm Bros fairy tales; Maria Tater’s compilation of Classic Fairy Tales for Norton. A truly bad edition of the LOTR can be seen behind it—the small pleather bound ones—and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story as well.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 16/08/2026

individual serial issues, which track along with the weather, revealing a world that thought it could “overcome” climate while showing, distinctly, that it was only obsessed with it. Hard to explain w character limits. Hope that makes sense!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 16/08/2026

experiencing in his new home. In that chapter, I tracked the appearance of certain “wet words” to show how they appeared in ways unrelated to character, showing how climate had seeped into the narrative just like the London fog did in the intro. I then compared this to the ads in the

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 16/08/2026

Amitav Ghosh has this idea, broadly, that the novel can’t do anything with weather but make it a metaphor/symbol for human interiority. BH certainly does this—esp around LD. But it was also written during the rainiest year on record in England, and amidst huge “drainage” problems CD was 1/

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 15/08/2026

Congrats on the final legs! Idk if I’ve mentioned—sorry if so—but I had a dissertation chapter on the weather words in BH and how they behave differently than you might expect (weather of course being huge throughout)

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 12/08/2026

Toddling the Stacks—come for the ASMR of an elderly mastiff snores, stay for the gentle sounds of puppy ears flapping in the breeze. Bonus litcrit for careful listeners! #dogsofbluesky #puppy #podcast

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 12/08/2026

THE KING WHO BANNED THE DARK offers an accessible and appropriately light-hearted look into propaganda, populist politics, and resistance when a young King, afraid of the dark, decides to just get rid of it. Buy it, sure, but request it at your local library too. It’s a #mustRead. #kidlit #edusky

A king, eating at a table, is advised by his staff that he can’t ban the dark outright without public support. He has to make the people think it’s their idea first.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 11/08/2026

Take a look at these pages from Clare Newberry’s 1940 Caldecott Honor winning April’s Kittens. I’d hang this in my little’s room as an art print any day! Miles above the Robert Lawson book that won that year (that episode drops Thursday). #kidlitart #kidlit #booksky #cats #kittens #art

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Greg Pincus @gregpincus.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Hey there, you #kidlit creator or lover or fan or friend - why not join a bunch of us for #kidlitchat here on Bluesky today at 9PM Eastern/6PM Pacific? We'll be happy to see you. Someone will offer you dessert. It's a good time, I tell ya! See you soon....

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 07/08/2026

#Picturebooks teach valuable lessons. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, for instance, can prepare you if your child ever asks you to “be pride rock” during imaginative play, the way mine just did. 😂 #girldad #dadjokes #dadlife #parenting

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 07/08/2026

in 2011, a cadre of truly great #picturebook authors signed a manifesto aimed squarely at exploding the form. We explored that moment this week through the lens of modernism and BJ Novak’s inaugural text, the chillingly named BOOK WITH NO PICTURES. #kidlit #edusky #booksky apple.co/3Tp8QMl

apple.co

BJ Novak's The Book with No Pictures | Children's Literature Criticism: Manifestos, Modernism, and the Works that Change Us

Podcast Episode · Toddling the Stacks—A Children’s Literature Podcast · August 3 · 28m

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 06/08/2026

Thank you for your wonderful book! It’s stuck with us a long time now!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 06/08/2026

It’s been a second but today’s haul of bedtime contraband was too egregious not to share. 4 titles in one bed! Rarely is the question asked: is our children reading? #kidlit #raisingreaders #dadlife #picturebook @sandraboynton.bsky.social

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

@aishasaeed.bsky.social and @anooshasyed.com created BILAL COOKS DAL, one of my little’s favorite #picturebooks about a boy who learns about patience cooking chana dal with his dad. Though 3, she’s no slouch in the kitchen, so tonight we made it! #devoured #kidlit #cookingwithkids #parenting

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

(Also this really pushes the limit on Bluesky’s heart-only react, ha)

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

Ugh. I’ve felt that, but at least in the classroom we have some ability to modify the assignment. That’s a real nightmare you’re stuck in—you can’t exactly ask kids to write the thing in front of you for your zine.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

And what a gift that the PB form is in some ways a universal language. I love this memory, too. #kidlitchat

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

Oh gosh!! I’m hoping next summer will be the perfect time to take my daughter. I’ve already shown her pictures of the statues and the park!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

But, stereotypical or no, it was MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS that broke the thing open. it’s a perfect picture book that made me feel as comfortable and at home as Dickens ever had. Every now and then I find another PB with that same kind of power—and I’m always grateful when I do #kidlitchat

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 05/08/2026

As far as I know, no one ever read to me as a kid. Reading became a way for me to stay safe and out of the way in elementary school, and I constantly pushed myself to read harder, more adult books. It wasn’t until I had a kid that I found PBs, and they were magical 1/ #kidlitchat

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alix e. harrow @alixeharrow.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

those rolling stacks you'll find in any big state school library

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Matterist Books @matteristbooks.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

The kids are all right. Let them read.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 03/08/2026

Strange to say, but yesterday I finished a book I wasn’t professionally obligated to read. That hasn’t happened since before the pandemic. I’m excited and ready for so many more!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 03/08/2026

New Episode Alert! Is @bjnovak.bsky.social 's The Book with No Pictures the Ulysses of #picturebooks? Eh. But amidst the turmoil of PBdom in the early 10s, the book represents a modernist-style experiment with form, language, and humor. Listen for more! #kidlit #edusky #booksky apple.co/3Tp8QMl

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 02/08/2026

Another #SundayFunday learning #garden haul! Our little picked most of the stuff going into the plot, decided where everything was going to go, and planted it all (with help). She even helped make the raised bed! Sadly no tomatoes have survived long enough to photograph. #parenting #girldad

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 01/08/2026

My cup truly runs over here. In order of appearance— Paul Day Charles Tyler Michelle Parke David Fell Emily Steinlight Zach Lesser David Wallace (not that one) Rob Nixon Bill Gleason So indebted to each of them. Just amazing people and educators.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 01/08/2026

This is such a powerful moment in I and Thou. It instantly came to mind when reading Jane Bennet’s Vibrant Matter—and I hadn’t read Buber in years at that point. He’s really an amazing thinker. Also beautiful kitty!

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 01/08/2026

Always two there are. Say hello to Tessa, Toddling The Stack’s newest intern! We just adopted her! She’s the youngest pup we’ve ever had, so lots of learning ahead for her and us. Our EM, Greta, already adores her though! #dogsOfBluesky #puppy #adoptDontShop #babyDog

A large black puppy with a white splash on her chest sits on green grass wearing a pink collar.

A large black puppy sits next to a much larger English Mastiff on green grass.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 31/07/2026

If you ever feel bad about not finishing a project, just remember that Microsoft has been making Word since 1983.

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Toddling The Stacks @toddlingthestacks.com · 31/07/2026

I do grammar boot camps with my students, and I leave comments if they request them or are majors, but I refuse to grade on grammar.

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