Thank You for a Fabulous 2025!

2025 is coming to a close and what a year it has been for Little Thoughts Press! Thank you so much to all of our wonderful readers, contributors, and everyone who sent in their work this year for consideration. In a year that so often felt bleak and heartbreaking, your art, your words, and your support for our magazine were incredible sources of joy and inspiration.

This year, we published three amazing issues. We hope you had as much fun reading them as we did creating them!

Our 10th issue, An Ekphrasis Adventure, was a wonderfully creative celebration of visual art and the many ways it can inspire storytelling.

Issue 11, Stirring Words, brought new and intriguing words to our vocabularies and reminded us how important it is as writers to remain excited about language.

And Issue 12, Better Together, closes out a long, difficult year on a much-needed note of hope and uplift with inspiring stories, poetry and artwork about the many ways people come together to make the world a better place. Better Together is available now in both print and as a free/pay-what-you-want PDF.

We are already looking forward to next year and our first issue of 2026, Head, Shoulders, Spleen & Nose. Submissions for this issue are open through December 31st. We’d love to consider your writing & artwork all about the human body.

Little Thoughts Press grew so much this past year and I want to send a special thank you to my incredible team of submissions readers, illustrators, and social media curators.

Thank you to…

Jennifer Thomas, for both serving as our guest editor for Issue 11: Stirring Words and joining our team as a submissions reader. This year, Jennifer shared her love of beautiful and oddball words with fellow writers and young readers, while continuing her own writing practice and offering workshops for young writers.

Kim Wagner Nolan, for joining our team as an illustrator. In addition to having her artwork featured in all three of our 2025 issues, Kim won the SCBWI Draw This! contest and had her illustration featured in the January SCBWI Insight Newsletter. She also received an Honorable Mention in PBParty and had a poem and illustration published in The Dirigible Balloon.

Anna Llewellyn, for joining our team as a submissions reader. This year, Anna’s artwork appeared in both our Ekphrasis Adventure and Better Together issues. She also made her art gallery debut, winning the Curator’s Choice Award at Greenpoint Gallery in New York, and she recently had a poem accepted to PaperBound Magazine’s forthcoming Autumn/Winter issue.

Stephanie Buosi, for joining our team as an illustrator. Stephanie’s artwork appeared in both our Stirring Words and Better Together issues. Her illustrations were also featured this year in Paperbound Magazine’s Spring/Summer 2025 issue, including as the cover art, and her work will also appear on the cover of Paperbound’s upcoming Autumn/Winter issue. Stephanie was the winner of the SCWBI Alaska's poster contest for their 2025 Summer conference! You can see what the poster looks like on her website. And you can find more of her work featured in Wild Green’s online magazine in Issue 6 “Starlight.” 

Brandy Belitterra, for joining our team as a submissions reader. Brandy’s chapter book series, Library Guardians, is debuting in the summer of 2026 with Sorra Books. The first book is titled Library Guardians: The Arboreal Dragons of Indonesia and the second book, Library Guardians: The Aztec Water Dogs of Mexico, will follow shortly after.

Imogen Hartland, for joining our team as an illustrator. In addition to having her artwork appear in all three of our 2025 issues, Imogen has published work in both Paperbound Magazine and The Dirigible Balloon this year. She also completed an illustrated draft of a picture book this year and is gearing up to search for a publisher in 2026.

Zoe Pritikin, for joining our team as social media and educational engagement manager. In addition to helping Little Thoughts Press celebrate our issues and contributors on social media, create educational activities for parents and teachers to pair with our past issues, and sprucing up our website, Zoe has spent 2025 working with two artists on the editorial work and publicity for their children’s books (“A” is for Alligators with Defibrillators (and other alphabet critters) and Beyond the Mountain), both of which will be published early next year.

And Rachael Taylor, who in addition to creating illustrations and the beautiful cover art for all of our issues, spent 2025 hard at work on illustrations for my picture book Benjamin’s Sad Day. Rachael and I cannot wait to share this book with readers in 2026!

For Younger Students (Ages 7 & Under)

This poem discusses many of the author’s favorite parts about winter. Some of the best parts of winter are building snowmen, drinking hot chocolate, and getting cozy at home! 

What are some things that you are looking forward to this winter?

HANDS ON CRAFT: Draw your own snowman and try to add everything that you are looking forward to this winter.

If you’re looking forward to sledding, give your snowman a sled! Or if you’re looking forward to sitting by the fire, draw a fireplace to keep your snowman warm, but don’t let it melt!

For Older Students (Ages 8+)

This poem uses rhyme to create a flow throughout the piece and tie words together in your head as you read it. When words rhyme, that means that they have the same ending sound. Those words end up sounding really similar even though they might mean two totally different things. You may have heard rhymes in other poems, or even popular nursery rhymes like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!

Let’s think about the rhyming form of the first stanza of this poem:

1: Winter hunts for last year's mittens

2: pulls on boots, draws smiles in steam

3: Winter nuzzles snow-white kittens

4: drinks hot chocolate swirled with cream.

In this poem, the first and third sentences end with a rhyming word, as do the second and fourth.

Read this section aloud and listen to your voice as you read it. Do you hear your voice creating a rhythm? Rhyming can be a great way to make words sound extra special out loud, almost like a song!

Make a list of rhyming words about winter that can be used to build a poem of your own.

For example, I chose the words “snow” and “blow”. My favorite part of winter is watching the snow, it swirls outside and I love to watch it blow!

As a bonus activity, try turning those word pairs into a full poem!

In Other News

We featured so many incredible interviews with contributors this year. You can find them all on our blog, but be sure to check out our most recent interviews with Stirring Words contributors Stephanie Buosi, Shaunessy Sinnett, Webb Smith, and Mims Sully.

This year, we were thrilled to be able to expand our mission to bring direct aid to schools and classroom projects. Thanks to our subscribers and everyone who purchased a print or pdf copy of our issues this year, we were able to contribute funds to an elementary school’s effort to bring a Buddy Bench to their playground, as well as to a 3rd-grade classroom’s Donors Choose project to provide STEM-based magazines for all students. Visit our For Teachers page to read more about these projects, find a link to our classroom funding request form, and learn more about obtaining free and discounted copies of our magazine for classrooms and school libraries.

Find links to all of our past issues, available in print or to download for free, here.

Annual subscriptions are available through our ko-fi memberships. Learn more about subscription tiers here.

Thank you for reading and supporting Little Thoughts Press in 2025! We look forward to sharing more fabulous kid-lit writing and artwork with you in the year ahead!