Day three in Texas! AUSTIN - tonight 6pm Book People. Tomorrow is Nashville, then on to Louisville and Decatur. bookpeople.com/event/2025-0...
Bestselling author of 50 books. PRINCESS ACADEMY, AUSTENLAND, PRINCESS IN BLACK, REAL FRIENDS, DREAM ON, ITTY BITTY KITTY-CORN. Mom of 4, wife of 1. she/her. Curiosity and compassion. www.shannonhale.com
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Day three in Texas! AUSTIN - tonight 6pm Book People. Tomorrow is Nashville, then on to Louisville and Decatur. bookpeople.com/event/2025-0...
I ❤️ librarians Not only are they the custodians of all that makes us human, they almost universally act like they understand what that means
Happy book birthday to DREAM ON, the latest graphic novel from fan favorite author @shannonhale.bsky.social, with illustrations by Marcela Cespedes! With 2 starred reviews, it is a joyful book perfect for readers who want to enjoy a gentle and accessible friendship story 🥰 bit.ly/4kQjjrZ #edusky
Today I was in a school library with a trained librarian. The school includes unhoused children and the kids of university professors. Watching how the librarian made all the kids feel welcome. Seeing the stiff, tense, worried body language soften. As they saw, maybe there is a space for me here. 💜
These are my public events. I'll also be doing a lot of school assemblies across 10 states this fall. Children's writers and illustrators often visit schools to talk to kids about books and creating art, though those opportunities have been decimated lately due to book banning and DEI fears.
DREAM ON tour starts today! UT - see me 2:30pm at Rose Park Elementary TX - I'll be in Katy on Wed and Austin on Thurs TN - Nashville on Fri KY - Louisville on Sat GA - Decatur on Sun See my website for more upcoming book festivals and events in UT, NC, CA, TX, OH, MN, & CO shannonhale.com/events
if a school teaches results and not how to question them, it is not a school but indoctrination
My fear is not that higher education ceases to exist due to AI, but that actual education is once again restricted to a privileged few and everyone else gets this garbage.
I keep going back to the kids of those rich tech oligarchs - they have MINIMAL technology in the classroom. They know how bad AI is, they don’t let *their* kids near it.
I keep thinking about this skeet. Cutting out creativity in the name of "efficiency" tracks perfectly with the priorities of modern America, but that doesn't make it any less diabolical.
i can't help but feel like this is the inevitable result of an education system that has (for decades) placed a disproportionate value on the results of standardized tests and final grades, instead of on the *process* of learning itself. what a sad elegy for our societal priorities.
I will spend three goddamn weeks "teaching this part" instead of letting the robot do it in ten seconds because the robot is not thinking, and if you use it, neither are you. And if I use it, neither am I.
The fun part of writing a story is going for a walk and accidentally solving a plot snarl while looking at a bird. The fun part of writing about someone else's story is suddenly seeing the cool patterns in the text. DISCOVERING the cool patterns. And being excited about the discovery.
It's in trying the thing that you learn to do the thing AND you learn why the thing is worth doing. Going "ChatGPT, summarise this novel" or "ChatGPT, give me ideas for a story about X" will get you mediocre slop, and you WON'T HAVE DONE THE THING.
As a university English instructor (and also an author), I will never use the robot in my teaching. I put a ridiculous amount of effort into trying to convince students that the point is to do the thing, even if you do it badly. OF COURSE you're going to do it badly. You've never done it before.
I'm looking into it
Here are my in-class instructions for integrating AI into your work: Don't. Generative AI is a bullshitting, planet destroying plagiarism machine that prevents learning. It's dehumanizing and you deserve better from your professors, your institution, and yourself because you and your voice matter.
people not in creative fields truly cannot grasp that the process is the point no process, no point
I love it I love it!!! You both did something extraordinary.
time for the hippos to reclaim the earth
Yes. Focusing on the ease of the product and not on the process. And adding salt to the wound, all my books were illegally used to train the LLMs that are robbing my kid of a full education.
I was shocked. but I'm hearing the same thing from my friends with college aged kids at multiple universities.
Yeah I was vague for privacy. But this isn't unusual. My friend's daughter just started college and her first professor warned the students "drop any class if the professor DOESN'T include instruction about how to integrate AI in your work." I heard the same from a different friend this year.
i don't think there's any way to overstate how much we're going to regret this entire cultural moment in the future, for how it's destroying our creative lives, destroying respect for art, destroying respect for creativity and the creative process, destroying our ability to connect to art.
my college kid was heartbroken when on the first day of class the professor said "I used to spend 3 weeks teaching this part, but just have AI create it for you and we'll skip it." Skipping the most creative part of the work. The part my kid most looked forward to.
wooooo!!!
Growth is hard. Healing is hard. But the amount of effort we will expend to pretend we don't have wounds is so much more than the energy it takes to heal them. We'd apparently rather stand here bleeding out, slowly dying rather than just living.
I will be doing a bunch of events in at least 10 states starting next week. Please see my website for information: shannonhale.com/events
DREAM ON comes out a week from tomorrow! Enjoy this little comic about me and Marcela Cespedes (illustrated by Mace), a couple of highly sensitive kids who grew up to make a graphic novel about a highly sensitive kid. 1/
Happy anniversary, pal
10 years ago today, me and Chompsky got stuck in a hole together <3 imgur.com/gallery/hole...
Imagine education with the AI mindset, that the goal is simply the diploma, not the learning and growth, adventures and experiences the process should help create. AI for art misses the entire point. The act of creation is so powerful because of how it changes you, the creator.
The focus on generative AI reveals how much weight our culture puts on the product rather than the process. Imagine parenting this way! The purpose of having children isn't simply the end result--creating an adult human. That mindset would be 18+ years of slogging without joy, fun or growth.
Did you LOVE the Real Friends series? If you did, here are 3 reasons why you are going to love @shannonhale.bsky.social's newest graphic novel Dream On, with the most beautiful art from Marcela Cespedes!! 😍
I did this — writers, heads up.
I think you're exactly right.
This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.
Less than two weeks till DREAM ON tour. My new graphic novel with Marcela Cespedes has three starred reviews! 🤩🤩🤩
Kitty-corn and friends share their unique versions of various body parts such as tails. But what about Octopus who doesn't have any of the chosen body parts? Check out the new board book by @shannonhale.bsky.social and LeUyen Pham. #kidlit #boardbooks geolibrarian.blogspot.com/2025/08/boar...
LOVE
@shannonhale.bsky.social Just wanted to share a photo of my little Princess in Black. 🖤💖
Comfort reading is the best. I'm so happy BoB can be that for you. Thank you.
librarians everywhere
In just over an hour, I'll be on a panel talking graphic novels on SLJ Teen Live. It's free if you want to join. (amending earlier skeet with correct link) www.slj.com/event/slj-te...
PLEASE cite the deep magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written, but I wasn't really paying attention
live action catbus looking pretty sweet
My DREAM ON tour dates are rapidly approaching. I hope to see you!
Very helpful myth debunking from the Freedom to Read Project. It succinctly offers responses to the main arguments posed by book banners. www.freedomtoreadproject.org/debunking_th...
This isn't a list of jobs that A.I. can easily replace. It's a list of jobs that techno fascists don't think are worthwhile or meaningful and that they want to eliminate. They don't want humans to try to make sense of the world, they want us to believe whatever we're told.
Happy 15th anniversary of the peak achievement of literary criticism, to all who celebrate
As usual, Miss Rachel said it better than me.
It really is fantastic. Sue Storm 4evah.
⭐ Stargaze with Mackids ⭐ DREAM ON! by @shannonhale.bsky.social & Marcela Cespedes is a joyful graphic novel about friendship, featuring children with high sensitivity and big emotions, making it a helpful tool to spark conversations and connections in the classroom! bit.ly/4kQjjrZ #edusky
WCK can use your donations. They are on the ground in Gaza, doing what they can in the face of a staggering and ongoing crime against humanity.
AAAH!!! Congrats Vera!!
ME (growing a majestic horse body as I walk toward center stage): Time to be the Centaur of Attention.
Thanks Barbara Gordon. I admire your work fighting crime in Gotham. Also in the library.
That's my picture book there, the fluffy pink kitten, the sweetest little story born out of sincere friendship between me and my collaborator LeUyen Pham. I still cannot fathom how that book is getting banned for being "sexually explicit." I love you so much, Texas. You've got this.
Today I sat outside with my 14yo and watched a hummingbird flit around a flowering bush. Later we thought we saw the hummingbird at a different bush but it was actually just the fattest, baddest bee I've ever beheld. There is still good in the world.
I am here for all your sparks of joy
His theology of suffering & mine are not the same -- that's OK. Regardless, this is the work -- to go to the depths of your heart and pain and come out with more love (optional: and more divine connection.) There are a lot of theologies and ways to get there; they don't all have to look the same.
Really wonderful exchange.
Today I went on a one hour drive with my 14yo and she played me songs she loved. We went outside to look at a double rainbow till it disappeared and then watched a Matt Smith Dalek episode. There is good in the world.
Best to you Greg and thanks for all you do
there are so many great things about generative AI! here are some of my favorites <3
5 more days to enter the DREAM ON sweepstakes over on IG: www.instagram.com/p/DMDdovKxCQS/ Just follow and comment to enter.
White House Evacuated After Trans Alarm Goes Off
No we can't suddenly go back to "everyone for themselves" agricultural small towns. We're all connected. We all depend on each other. We all lift each other up, or we all push each other down. There is no selective pushing down that doesn't affect everyone. Hurting others hurts ourselves.
We live in a country where our populations are so large and often condensed that it is impossible to get what you need to live (water, food, shelter, healthcare) without community. It is the government's job to help coordinate and support this. Such a farce to pretend otherwise.
I’ve read that one root cause of addiction is the belief that you can never really get what you need, so why not take whatever comfort you can get. On a macro level, so many fear they can't get what they need so the best they can do is make sure others don’t get their needs met either.
Burnout is clinically understood as a combo of 6 factors—work overload, lack of control, insufficient rewards, breakdown in community, absence of fairness, & value conflicts—and only a fraction of it is under your control. Burnout is a systemic problem, so be kind to yourself and hard on the system.
I loved loved the Superman movie. So happy to have a film that was worthy of John Williams's theme, and it was funny too. So many great moments, big hero moments as well as intimate conversations. Happy to see @tomking.bsky.social thanked at the end! Congrats to James Gunn on a terrific script.
The thing about "virtue signalling" is wild. People get obsessed with *why* someone is behaving like a human being. It's a Calvinist thing, like insisting that if you do good works without having genuine faith in your heart or being one of the elect, you're damned.
Arches is spectacular. Definitely worth a visit.
this is canon
Room with a view, in Provo, Utah! Just back from BYU's Symposium on Books for Young Readers. Not too shabby!
it was so great to see you!
having emotions
What a headline.
thanks!
oh yes I love precheck!
ooh great idea
Thanks Gale! Labeling is a thing I haven't but will enact immediately. I bought a set of interlocking containers and they leaked on my flights. Do you have a brand you like?
And the moment has a sound bed beneath it. It was hard to hear in the theater but clearer on our home system. It’s the aural texture of the abuse, the pain, the trauma. It becomes the rhythm section for his singing. Literally showing what the blues is. Loved that scene.
One of the most impactful scenes I’ve witnessed. My jaw was on the floor. Tears welled in my eyes. The inarticulable translated through song.
yes love this
gracias!
I'm going to be traveling more than usual this fall, flying to about a dozen different stops. Please send me your favorite travel hacks!
Hey book lovers! Support your local library, of course. Also! Cool news! @bookshop.org has free shipping July 8-11. They also now sell ebooks, which is an excellent development. AND if you sign up for their email, there are periodic boook/ebook deals & I've snapped up many fine books that way. 💚📖🔥📘
I wish we were all ready to live in love. I wish we'd grown past the cruelty and control.
The mega-bestselling graphic novel author Shannon Hale (REAL FRIENDS, BEST FRIENDS) is back with a new middle grade graphic novel about hope, friendship, and heartfelt wishes. Join her on August 28th discussing DREAM ON! More info + RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/bookpeople... @shannonhale.bsky.social
A second man joins him, and finally the younger man seems to understand and joins in as well. This rebellion. This heartbreaking, glorious rebellion. To sing. To laugh. In the face of all the cruelty and powerlessness. Singing and laughing is the real power.
There is a moment in SINNERS I think about a lot. A character tells a horrible true story, and the weight of it is crushing, because not only did that thing really happen but it could happen, again and again and again. And then he laughs and starts to sing. He smiles and laughs and sings.
6 Grant Opportunities for School Libraries This funding can help with everything from collection development and programming to disaster recovery and more.
For Barnes & Noble shoppers, there's a preorder deal going on right now. You can preorder my upcoming books for 25% off with the code.
