Whenever you start a new job there’s always a wealth of material to get on top of. Even when you’re experienced in an industry, there’s always new processes to learn & people to meet. But transitioning from one industry to another is whole other level of learning curve; a parabola if you will, where I rapidly went from feeling like I knew what I was doing, to feeling like the proverbial John Snow, and now I’m -hopefully – rapidly making it up the other side.

Since starting at HarperCollins Publishers three months ago I’ve had so much to learn, not least of which are the books that I’ll be bringing to educators across the country. Although, let’s face it, getting to know dozens of amazing books is no hardship for an ex-English teacher, is it?

So here I am, reading books for a living! Well, a little more than that, but that’s certainly been a big part of the upswing of that parabolic curve. It helps that I started at HarperCollins already deeply & firmly in love with Eli Bell from 2018’s stand out debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe. I’m so excited that I’ll be able to help get this amazing novel into as many classrooms as possible. Another find has been that Emily Rodda – who I loved as a child – is still writing beautiful, insightful children’s fiction. I missed the release of His Name Was Walter last year, but I was so pleased to spend some time with it recently. The feedback from many of you that I’ve met at conferences over the past couple of months has shown that you love it as well. There’s also the sheer joy of another in the wombat series, with the release of Happy Birthday Wombat this month. Who doesn’t love spending time with Mothball? And now I know what I’ll be gifting to my brand-new nephew when he arrives in September.

One of the most exciting things about working in publishing is getting to hear about books before they’re even written, and there’s already several books that I’m bursting to tell people about when it’s closer to release dates. On the other hand, one of the hardest things in this industry is not to spill the beans about these books, particularly when your teacher friends are complaining about a lack of texts on an issue and you’re dying to tell them you’ll have just the thing in a couple of months!

I’m so happy that I get to combine two of my biggest passions – books & education – in one job. I’m thrilled that I also get to go on this journey with you, the Teachers’ Hub community; that we can discover amazing books and delight children with the joy of the written word together.

Welcome to a new era of Teachers’ Hub, I look forward to hearing from many of you, and hopefully getting to meet more than a few of you!

Jemma