Picture the scene. Your little ones aren't so little any more. Once, where their faces were all aglow at the prospect of reading through a picture book, or gnawing steadily on the corner of a well-loved board book, they're now reading on their own and they don't want any of that 'baby book' stuff.
CALAMITIES!
You, of course, still love picture books and are still as enthusiastic about them as you were the first day you hit the 'submit' button on your first blog post. But without a willing partner (or partners) in crime, does your book blog lose its relevance almost overnight?
Over the course of the last year, Charlotte has changed so much - not just physically and mentally but also in her tastes in just about everything.
Long gone are the pink princessy things (hooray!), put aside for more geeky and science-ey pursuits (which actually fills me with such pride and delight that I just can't tell you how great it is not to have to wade through a sea of taffeta doll's clothes just to make my way across the living room floor).
Gone also are the majority of picture books, either stashed away to eventually pass on to Charlotte's new little cousins, or in some rare cases, kept just because I can't bear to part with them myself.
You see, as tough as it sounds, few book bloggers out there can claim to live in a mansion filled with children's books from floor to ceiling in every room that they lovingly pore over and read regularly. Physically storing books is tougher than it sounds (and anyone who's had to lug 262 books - like we recently did - to donate to a local charity can vouch for how heavy those books are and how much room they take up!)
It's an extremely fortunate position to be in (we know exactly just how lucky we are, don't you worry!), but it also leaves us with a quandary. What happens as Madame Charlotte progresses onto middle grade - and largely chapter book - material for her reading choices. Suddenly our book cases are filled with smaller books (hooray!) but this also means that the way we review books has had to change too, and for the first time since the blog started up we've turned books down because there's no way we'd be able to do them justice, alas.
Nowadays, discussions over breakfast usually revolve around a new chapter book, so in some ways it's actually become easier to review books (though Charlotte always gets to them first, and I get to follow up with a blitz through myself just to get the gist of what she's talking about).
It is a funny feeling though, to look longingly at our copies of Barbapapa or Grandad Island, or any number of other utterly essential children's books that we can't bear to part with and realise that Charlotte now wants to read stuff by middle grade mainstays like Frank Cotterell Boyce and Harriet Whitehorn (Pearl! What a genius creation!) and so many, many other middle grade and early teen superstars
The whole transitional change-thing was further highlighted when one of the lovely PRs we've been in touch with regularly gently pointed out that we might want to come off their mailing lists as they predominantly deal with picture books and baby books.
My inner voice squealed with terror. We have loved their books so much in the past, how could we bear to let them go!
I'd really love to hear from other book bloggers who are going through this themselves and see if (like me) they're clinging on to reviewing picture books. We'll keep doing it, as long as Charlotte still cracks a wry grin at a particularly brilliant and original book (which, hooray, she still does!)