It’s a double publication day!

Swapna HaddowRoosting With Dave, Scrapbook

It’s double book birthday day with not one but two books out! First up, we have the sequel to How to Save your Granny from a Runaway Train: How to Make Diamonds from your Pencils.

We are back in the world of science, this time looking at brilliant and bonkers scenarios that can be solved by the world of Chemistry. Want to survive at sea with pirates? Carry a dinosaur egg across the jungle? Send secret messages? Make diamonds from pencils? Well, there are heaps of answers, awesome science facts and experiments to do in this book!

And we return to the world of Dave Pigeon with the FINALE of the series. Dave and Skipper are back in a brand new adventure:


The Human Lady has brought home another injured pigeon . . . And he looks a little bit like Dave! When fierce competition erupts between the two birds, it’s up to Skipper to find a way to prove who is the most Dave, once and for all! This is the final instalment in the Dave Pigeon series, celebrating ten years of Dave Pigeon.

I have had the time of my life writing the Dave Pigeon series for the last decade and this final book is a thank you to you, the birdrilliant readers. I hope you love it as much as I did writing it. Check out the Book Club feature in The Week Junior:

If you spot either of the books out in the wild, do let me know – I’d love to know where they’ve found homes.

Happy reading, everyone!

British Science Week with Mr Dilly

Swapna HaddowScrapbook

It’s British Science week and to celebrate, I joined Mr Dilly for a British Science Week bonanza with Ben Hoare and Isabel Thomas.

I spoke with My Dilly about How to Make Diamonds from your Pencils and whether it is actually possible to make diamonds from your pencils. We also spoke about everything from quicksand to quarks and even made a detour to one of my favourite films, The Princess Bride.

I shared my top six favourite facts from How to Make Diamonds from your Pencils and here they are here in a countdown from six to one:

6. The Statue of Liberty was originally an red-orange colour and only turned blue-green after the metal in the coating of the statue interacted with the air.

5. It is technically possible to make diamonds from your pencils!

4. Red cabbage can be used like litmus paper.

3. Silly Putty was made my mistake! It was created in an experiment gone wrong in trying to make cheap rubber.

2. You can make your own ice cream using a sandwich bag of ice cubes and salt.

1. You can make plastic from milk, using vinegar.

Happy British Science Week, everyone! Have fun discovering awesome new things.

Happy World Book Day!

Swapna HaddowRoosting With Dave, Scrapbook, The Terrible Trio

It’s World Book Day and I kicked off my World Book Day celebrations with Cliftonville Primary School.

We talked about The Terrible Trio and created heaps of new stories for Margarine the penguin, including a trip to Candyland and competing in the Ocean Olympics. They also had some great questions and we discussed everything from creating book covers to why it is nighttime in New Zealand when it is daytime in the UK!

I then tuned with Shrewsbury International School in Bangkok to continue the World Book Day celebrations.

There were costumes galore with an entire flock of Dave Pigeon teachers too!

Photo (c) Shrewsbury International School, Bangkok

We talked about Dave Pigeon, creating stories and being an author. Everyone worked so hard on their Dave Pigeon postcards, which you can see for yourself in the gallery, and I answered heaps of questions about the series.

Happy World Book Day everyone! I hope you are spending the day reading brilliant books.

It’s a Top Ten takeover!

Swapna HaddowThe Terrible Trio

The Terrible Trio have taken over the January Aotearoa Junior Fiction and Young Adult Bestseller List! I’m so chuffed to see Zeb, Marge and Barry in at number TWO, with The Day the Mac ‘n’ Cheese Ran Out, and number FOUR, with The (not so) Superheroes.

Thank you so much to all the brilliant booksellers and buyers who have embraced my favourite trio with so much love. If you spot The Terrible Trio out in the wild, do let me know – I’d love to see where they are camping out.

And then there were two!

Swapna HaddowThe Terrible Trio

The second book in The Terrible Trio series is landing in bookshops and libraries around the world over the next couple of weeks, starting with the UK!

Zeb the zebra, Barry the lemur and Margarine the penguin have the WORST superpowers in the world, and Zeb is sure life can’t get any worse. But when he turns up for his shift at the Superhero Café and finds it closed, he’s in for a shock!

Margarine has lost her superpower of making mac ‘n’ cheese and that’s just as Zeb has promised an angry hungry lion and his whole pride a LOT of mac ‘n’ cheese. As The Terrible Trio scramble to fix the problem, they soon realise they may be on the menu themselves!

Can Margarine figure out a way to get her powers back and keep the lion happy?

Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out! Illustrated by Minky Stapleton throughout, I’m supremely proud to say that the The Terrible Trio series is now translated into over fifteen languages and has held the number one spot in New Zealand for twelve weeks!

To celebrate the launch of The Terrible Trio: The Day the Mac ‘n’ Cheese Ran Out, I teamed up with Scholastic Book Club Live to talk to heaps of schools around the UK about the second book in the series and to run a workshop on creating story plans and coming up with story ideas.

And we’ve had awesome reviews of the book already! Check out Mrs Sydney’s Famous World’s Smallest Library review and this STARRED review in ALA’s Booklist:

I hope you all love The Day the Mac ‘n’ Cheese Ran Out as much as I do. I had an absolute blast writing this one and can’t wait to introduce you to more adventures from The Terrible Trio!

Happy New Reggie!

Swapna HaddowPawsome News

Happy New Year, Readers! Me and illustrator Becka Moor started 2026 with the release of a brand new Reggie Rabbit book.

This one is the fourth in the series and after successfully exposing another Masque plot, word is getting out about crime-solving Reggie Rabbit and his parakeet partner. And this is exactly why a small shy mouse called Mo reaches out to the pair for help; his home, the warren-like metro tunnels underneath Bearburgh, is under threat. Cracks are appearing in the structure of the metro and in the mouse community that inhabit it.

Reggie and Pipsquark want to help the Metro Mice but Reggie will have to use all his detective skills to uncover what is going on beneath Bearburgh city. Will he be able to crack the case? Well, you’ll have to get your paws on a copy of Reggie Rabbit and the Metro Mice to find out.

Hoppy reading, everyone!

Thank you for all the book love in 2025!

Swapna HaddowScrapbook

It’s been an incredible year here at Swapna Haddow HQ – I had a whopper ELEVEN books published this year, with everything from fiction to non-fiction to picturebooks to my first in a brand new graphic novel series.

Thank you so much for all the love and support of my books this year. I am so grateful. I’ve been working hard on brand new books and next year, there will be more from The Terrible Trio, more from me and Jess Bradley and our Solved by Science series, the finale of the Dave Pigeon series and EVEN MORE BOOKY WONDERFULNESS!

Have an awesome festive period. I hope it’s filled with love, mince pies and a whole bunch of brilliant reads.

See you in 2026!

Granny made the School Reading List’s Children’s Books of the Year 2025 shortlist!

Swapna HaddowScrapbook

How to Save your Granny from a Runaway Train has been shortlisted for the School Reading List’s Children’s Books of the Year 2025!

I’m absolutely chuffed to bits for Team Granny who all worked so hard on this book. There are heaps of incredible books on the list so get voting for your favourites, and if you’ve enjoyed How to Save your Granny from a Runaway Train please feel free to give us a vote in the non-fiction category too. (Granny would be very happy about that.)

Thank you School Reading List!

Flying High with Dave Pigeon

Swapna HaddowRoosting With Dave

I was joined by over twenty classes in a HUGE Dave Pigeon (Turkey Dinner!) story-planning workshop with Flying High English Hub event.

I introduced my books and read from Dave Pigeon (Turkey Dinner!) before sharing my top tips on how to beat the blank page when you start writing a story. We planned over thirty new Dave Pigeon stories featuring worried worry monsters, visits to Chocolate Land and tyrannical rulers.

Thank you so much to everyone who joined in – I can’t wait to read all your stories!