Just to reiterate, I am NOT on Facebook. If you come across (or are approached by) a Facebook account pretending to be me, they're an imposter. They should be distrusted and reported.

THE FOREST OF A THOUSAND EYES is on the Bank Street College of Education's list of the best books published in 2025! instagram.com/p/DZezm4eox2m/

TRAITORS' NEST is in the @thebookseller's Children's Preview list of Top 10 Titles not to miss in August! 'Hardinge's worlds are always so distinctive, and this historical YA fantasy is no exception, combining imaginative world-building with real heart.'

The five bowls of fresh water out in my garden are getting a lot of bird-traffic today.

A wonderful starred review of TRAITORS' NEST in @KirkusReviews! "Layered and lush; an expertly woven tapestry." kirkusreviews.com/book-revie…

TRAITORS' NEST has a lovely starred review in Publishers Weekly! publishersweekly.com/9781419… "...spirited tale of derring-do that’s a triumph and a joy from start to finish." @PublishersWkly

The School Library Journal Day of Dialog is happening today, and there's still time to register! slj.com/event/school-library… I'll be appearing in the panel 'A YA Sampler' at 10.05am ET, 3.05pm BST, with @DustiBowling, Sami Ellis, @beckkubrick, Kara Storti and moderator Jesse Sanders!

This is a monarch butterfly migration arriving in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. None of these butterflies has ever been here before. Their great-great-grandmothers left this exact grove in March. By July those grandmothers were dead. The butterflies you're watching are four to five generations downstream, born somewhere between Texas and Ontario, and they just flew up to 3,000 miles to a tree none of their parents ever saw. The brain doing the navigation is smaller than a grain of rice. The mechanism is a sun compass time-compensated by a circadian clock running in the antennae. Cut the antennae and the monarch loses orientation within hours. The clock corrects for the sun's position drifting across the sky as the day moves. Add iron-bearing magnetite particles for magnetic field detection on cloudy days, and a 0.5 gram insect is running redundant inertial guidance. The destination is more specific than the navigation. They cluster on a few dozen oyamel fir groves in the Sierra Madre at 9,000 to 11,000 feet. The microclimate has to sit between 32 and 41°F. Below freezing kills them. Above 41°F burns the fat reserves they need to survive five months without feeding. The right band exists a few hundred meters thick on a few specific mountains. Outside it, the migration ends. One generation each year is built differently from the rest. Summer monarchs live two to six weeks. The fall generation lives eight months. It postpones reproduction, fattens up, and carries the entire round trip in a single body. The map is genetic. Nobody has fully decoded how. A monarch hatched in a backyard in Toronto in September has never seen a mountain, never smelled a fir, never met an ancestor. It flies south for ten weeks, picks the right peak, and lands on the tree its bloodline has been returning to for tens of thousands of years. The forest knows the families that come back.

Masayo Fukuda, contemporary master of kirie, or Japanese paper-cutting, crafting hyper detailed creatures from single sheets of paper #womensart

Shakespeare mind cloud created by Allysa Gray.

Incredible starling murmuration gracing the Italian skies over Sassari, Sardinia. 🇮🇹

A certified poet from Slough, Whose methods of rhyming were rough, Retorted, ‘You'll see That the letters agree, And if that’s not sufficient, I’m through’ PUNCH, 1935

Incredible send off ! 🌷 🌷 🪿 🪿 😮 On this day last year, thousands of snow geese took off from a field near McLean Rd. Their migration starts around the first of April, but we got lucky in the middle of the month with tulips in bloom. The way they lift off above the colors is breathtaking. #wawx #pnw #nature

The land wakes in green gowning, golden gorse. The land wakes in tangle, scratch and a constancy of call. Woodpecker, blackcap and even greenfinch’s wheezing song delight the ears. Joy rides tides of blood. Hope cracks the armoured earth. Spring walks the way. - #EmilyCBanting

ICYMI, today is the cover reveal for TRAITOR'S NEST! Look at the beautiful cover that Emma Pidsley has created! The book is coming out on 26th August.

From @FrancesHardinge comes a visionary YA historical fantasy in which 16 year old Burr takes on The Great Game which sees castles move about the realm like chess pieces, and people like him used as mere pawns. Preorder Traitors' Nest now: waterstones.com/book/traitor…