Hi, I’m Samantha Tidy.
I am an Australian author of adult and children’s books (those above), who also happens to be an English Teacher, and a Teacher Librarian in a K-12 co-ed school in NSW.
This is a website of valuable links, videos and resources that I have built to use in my library (and English) classroom. Its free to use - for parents, teachers, and teacher librarians everywhere.
Teacher Librarians: Forgot to plan a lesson? Just show any of the videos on the home page under mindful scrolling… hours of relevant content to use as a catalyst for a class discussion on life literacies. Under TEACH, you will find a growing list of lessons I’ve designed in CANVA. Just save yourself a copy you can edit (they are locked TO VIEW only).
Parents: need something to preface a chat about social media algorithms? You’ll find it here. This website is all about preparing young people to be information literate, media savvy digital citizens. How about a mobile phone contract for your teenager? Under TOOLS.
If you would like to support me, you are most welcome to buy me a coffee (small donation of your choice), or you could even buy my books. I have two more children’s books coming out in 2026 with HarperCollins Australia and Windy Hollow Books. Both deal with Australian history as this is what I write - narrative non-fiction. It follows a long career in educating young people about heritage collections in libraries, galleries and museums.
My author website is samanthatidy.com Unless you are after Our Bush Capital, (see my website for that one) you can find most of my books in any Australian bookstore.
Why an octopus?
The octopus icon of my website symbolises intelligence, adaptability, regeneration and the unknown. I believe, if you were going to pick a totem for libraries the world over, an octopus pretty much covers it. Why?
After watching MY OCTOPUS TEACHER, I was reminded that nature holds lots of secrets that we are yet to discover - just like libraries.
Octopus lifespans are very short - just like the window we have as teachers and parents, to help young people gain the valuable skills they need to be information-literate, media savvy digital citizens.
Learning today for young people (and teaching young people how to learn), really requires about four sets of arms. You need to be very adaptable, with the changes coming our way. AI is changing the learning landscape daily and this is changing our relationship with technology, in both good and bad ways. In time, I believe this will sharpen the lens we use to understand humanity.
In supporting students through this journey, teacher librarians need to be able to balance a lot of spinning plates with those eight arms - promoting reading, literacy (information literacy, media literacy), critical thinking, digital citizenship, how to spot a scam, how to create a great password, and the list goes on…
Libraries too, have to constantly regenerate and reinvent themselves, to be relevant. I love that they do that, just like an octopus will grow a new tentacle if you rip one off. Librarians are the masters of making sure libraries survive, no matter the changes experienced in the information world, and no matter how many people think libraries are outdated and no longer useful. They are brilliant chameleons, adjusting quickly to the landscape, just like the octopus hiding in plain sight.
