Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been writing children’s books all my adult life. That means trying to find ways to communicate exactly what I’m imagining. I love words and stories. As a teenager, I wrote down my favourite words and carried them around with me. When I had children, I was fascinated by how fast they learned to make themselves understood, with and without words. The words we choose are important – but they’re only one way to communicate. What about pictures? Body language? Online media? Pheromones? The signals animals and plants give out? The more I learn about communication, the more fascinating it becomes.


I wrote

After Tomorrow

By Gillian Cross,

Book cover of After Tomorrow

What is my book about?

Could I manage as well as they do? That’s the question that made me write After Tomorrow. I’d been…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Arrival

Gillian Cross Why did I love this book?

Imagine leaving your family and moving, on your own, to a place, where you can’t understand the language or the culture or even the buildings. A place where everything is utterly strange. The Arrival doesn’t just describe what that’s like. It allows you to experience it for yourself. And it explores how people can still communicate, even without shared language or culture. It’s a brilliant book - subtle and moving and full of hope. And it does all that without using a single word.

By Shaun Tan,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked The Arrival as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

What drives so many to leave everything behind and journey alone to a mysterious country, a place without family or friends, where everything is nameless and the future is unknown. This silent graphic novel is the story of every migrant, every refugee, every displaced person, and a tribute to all those who have made the journey.

THE ARRIVAL has become one of the most critically acclaimed books of recent years, a wordless masterpiece that describes a world beyond any familiar time or place.

Sited as No 35 in The Times 100 Best Books of all time. It has sold over…


Book cover of Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

Gillian Cross Why did I love this book?

I’ve always loved observing children as they learn to speak. But I never understood what a triumph that is until I read Stephen Pinker’s book. He explores a huge range of topics, including what we can learn from the mistakes children make, how languages develop, brain imaging, major ideas in philosophy, computer speech simulation, Noam Chomsky’s ideas about linguistics, and genetic research. And he does all that by focusing on regular and irregular verbs. Sounds dull? Think again. It’s a fascinating book.

By Steven Pinker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Words and Rules as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How does language work? How do children learn their mother tongue? Why do languages change over time, making Shakespearean English difficult for us and Chaucer's English almost incomprehensible? Why do languages have so many quirks and irregularities? Are they all fundamentally alike? How are new words created? Where in the brain does language reside?In Words and Rules , Steven Pinker answers these and many other questions. His book shares the wit and style of his classic, The Language Instinct , but explores language in a completely different way. In Words and Rules , Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language…


Book cover of Embassytown

Gillian Cross Why did I love this book?

I like science fiction when it’s about big ideas and they don’t come much bigger than this. Imagine a world where the alien inhabitants are incapable of lying. They can’t even use figures of speech, like similes, unless someone has acted out what they want to use as a comparison. (Avice, the girl who ate what was given to her, is the human simile who narrates the story.) Sounds idyllic? Maybe – until you start thinking about how you’d make plans, or discuss ideas. This isn’t an easy read, but it’s fascinating and it made me think hard.

By China Miéville,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Embassytown as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, China Mieville's astonishing Embassytown is an intelligent and immersive exploration of language in an alien world.

Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe.

Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts - who cannot lie.

Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect…


Book cover of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

Gillian Cross Why did I love this book?

I knew that animals communicate with each other, and I’ve read some intriguing books about how trees seem to communicate, but – fungi? That was a completely new idea to me. This book explores topics like how fungi influence humans and animals (with some creepy stuff about insects), the ‘Wood Wide Webs’ which link fungi, bacteria, plants, and trees, and the role mycorrhizal fungi played in the development of life on earth. We’re all connected. Once you’ve read it, a woodland walk will never be the same again!

By Merlin Sheldrake,

Why should I read it?

21 authors picked Entangled Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.

“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday

When we think…


Book cover of Going Postal

Gillian Cross Why did I love this book?

The Discworld books are the best kind of serious play, exploring aspects of our everyday world by turning them upside down, filling them with dwarfs and vampires, and embedding them in a non-stop action story – which somehow manages to say intelligent and important things about the central topic. Going Postal is about a clash between Ankh-Morpork’s government-run Post Office and the privately-owned clacks service (like email but with different technology). Both sides get a fair shot and the conflict is resolved by an almost magical piece of communication by a trickster who understands the magic of language.

By Terry Pratchett,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Going Postal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A beautiful new hardback edition of the classic Discworld novel.

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet.

It was a tough decision.

But he's got to see that the mail gets though, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.


Explore my book 😀

After Tomorrow

By Gillian Cross,

Book cover of After Tomorrow

What is my book about?

Could I manage as well as they do? That’s the question that made me write After Tomorrow. I’d been learning about refugees in Chad, and how they cope with living in camps. Suddenly I thought, Suppose it was me? And then (because I’m a storyteller) Suppose it was a boy called Matt, who’s good at mending bikes…?

What if the pound collapsed and money stopped working? What if people started fighting over food? Would Matt and his family escape through the Channel Tunnel? What would happen when they arrived in France as refugees? I researched hard, to make sure the story was as realistic as possible. And the more I learned, the more scarily plausible it seemed…

Book cover of The Arrival
Book cover of Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
Book cover of Embassytown

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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

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Mimi Zieman Author Of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Mimi's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.


By Mimi Zieman,

Why should I read it?

28 authors picked Tap Dancing on Everest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…


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Interested in immigrants, language, and fungus?

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Fungus 27 books