It’s Diwali! Thank you so much to everyone who joined Scholastic School Live and took part in the ‘All About Diwali’ event.
I had such a great time sharing Diwali stories and activities with you and I know my dog, Archie, did too!
Please do get in touch and share your Diwali makes and bakes with me. I’d love to see how you celebrated.
Today, Maisie Chan, Tọlá Okogwu and I were invited to talk about our experience writing Series Fiction.
Jasmine Richards hosted the panel and it was so great to share our mutual love for writing for younger readers and find out what got us writing for the age group.
Tọlá shared her feelings of the pressure to be ‘perfect’ as a person of colour in an industry where people of colour are a minority. I talked about ‘casual inclusivity’ and how it is important that characters of colour are seen doing everyday things and not just in issue-based books. And Maisie shared her experiences of making sure her books had diverse characters because it’s so important that all children see themselves in stories.
We all agreed that this age group needed quality fiction – readers are just starting to build their reading muscles so series fiction deserves as much love and attention as picturebooks and middle grade books if we want to build readers for life.
Bad Panda has been longlisted for the Blue Peter Book Awards 2022!
I’m pleased as punch that Bad Panda is on such a fantastic longlist alongside some of my absolute favourite books of the year – a total honour!
I was flying solo without my partner-in-books, Sheena Dempsey, at Wokingham Children’s Book Festival today.
Despite a couple of Powerpoint hitches, I had a fantastic time, ably assisted by Gemma and Sally from Wokingham Town Council. I talked about the inspiration behind Bad Panda and shared some tricks and tips for planning stories. We heard about pandas in orchards, pandas playing football, pandas travelling to Brazil and even pandas who time-travel!
Thank you so much to everyone who came along and got involved – I can’t wait to hear all your panda stories.
Today, I dropped in an author Zoom to see Grade 2 at the International School of Paris in France.
We spoke about Bad Panda and I gave them my top tips on planning a story using objects in the classroom. The pupils had heaps of questions for me and I told them all about where ideas come from and how to make a book.
Thank you so much to the brilliant staff and pupils at ISP for such a bearilliant event.
I’m thrilled to announce that I will be the University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence 2022. I’m so honoured (and a little bit daunted) to follow in the footsteps of previous fellows – all of whom are my writing heroes.
I’ll be blogging about my experience so stay tuned next year to hear what I get up to.
Rounding off the Bad Panda Blog Tour is the fantastic The Sapling. Check out Pearl’s interview here.
And don’t forget to catch up with all the brilliant bloggers who joined us for the tour. Massive panda hugs of thanks to Desna, Zac, Adele, Tris and Pearl and The Sapling.
It’s the penultimate day of the Bad Panda Blog Tour NZ and we are dropping in on the lovely Tris at The Book Whisperer. Have a read of her brilliant review here.
Kia ora from day three of the Bad Panda blog tour NZ and were we are stopping off to visit Adele Broadbent at What Book Next?. Have a read of Adele’s post here.
