📚 The Storystead Weekly Update: October 5–11, 2026

This week at The Storystead ended up being much more about the website and database than adding a huge number of new books. I had a longer list of things I hoped to get done, and most of that list is still sitting there waiting for me. I did make some important updates behind the scenes though.

📖 Books Added

This week I added Lolo’s Light by Liz Garton Scanlon and Dragon Fruit by Makiia Lucier to The Storystead.

I was also hoping to get my weekend picture books added, but I ran into a couple of issues while working through them. If I cannot get those finished right away, they may just roll into next weekend’s batch. You win some, you lose some.

🛠️ Around the Website

A lot of this week’s work was maintenance and cleanup. I updated the layout of the individual book entry pages, added support for multiple ISBNs, and started going back through older entries to adjust those where needed.

I also updated some of the links on the homepage. There are still more to fix, but I am slowly working through them.

I adjusted some of the site colors for better accessibility as well. I want The Storystead to be useful, but that also means paying attention to whether the site itself is comfortable and easy to use. Accessibility means so much to me.

⚠️ Content & Support Pages

I updated the Anticipatory Grief and Illness Support page and also created a new SIDS and Infant Loss trigger warning page.

Those are currently the only dedicated trigger warning pages I have needed, although I fully expect that to change as I add more books and encounter more topics that need clearer content information.

Like the rest of the database, those pages will probably continue to evolve too.

📚 What I Read

I finished A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess this week and have already moved on to my next challenged-book read.

I have not officially introduced that reading project on the blog yet, so I will save the full explanation for another post, but it is definitely becoming a bigger part of what I am working on.

🌱 Where Things Stand

This was not the week where I knocked out everything on my list. Not even close.

Though, I did make progress on some of the less visible parts of The Storystead, and those matter too. The book pages are improving, the database structure is getting better, the support pages are growing, and I am slowly cleaning up pieces of the site that still need attention. (Forever project)

Some weeks are going to be heavy on new books and reviews. Some weeks are going to be mostly fixing links, adjusting layouts, and figuring out why something suddenly stopped working the way I expected it to.

Apparently this was one of those weeks.

Next up, I am hoping to get those delayed picture books added, keep working through the older ISBN entries, continue cleaning up the homepage, and keep reading. Always reading

We’ll see what actually gets done.