Blog

Sheena and I kicked off Wednesday morning with a Bad Panda interview with Zac McCallum, school librarian and blogger at My Best Friends are Books. This week marks the release of Bad Panda in New Zealand and Australia so, despite lockdown, it didn’t seem right not to mark the occasion.

We chatted about how the book came to be, our favourite illustrations, how to create names for pandas that look like a sack of potatoes and Sheena talked us through how to draw our very own Lins.

Thank you so much to everyone who came along and made my morning so much fun and thank you to Zac for hosting a brilliant event.

Thank you so much to Discover Story Centre for having me and Sheena! We took part in an Bad Panda online reading and drawalong and if you came along, do share your drawing with us – we’d love to see them.

Here’s mine:

Libraries were where I first got hooked on books and anyone who knows me knows how passionately I advocate for libraries so I was thrilled to be asked to be part of the ‘Meet the Author’ series with the GLL National Libraries Digital Programme where I could introduce Bad Panda to viewers on Facebook.

It’s the penultimate day of the Bad Panda blog tour and today Jo at Library Girl and Book Boy is hosting. Read her wonderful review of Bad Panda here.

It’s day 5 of the Bad Panda blog tour and we are stopping in with The Book Activist. And guess what? You even get an exclusive behind the scenes sneaky peek at the making of Bad Panda today!

We are mid-Bad Panda blog tour and we are visiting Emma at My Book Corner. Have a read of her review here and try her panda quiz too. I got 6 correct answers – can you beat my score?

Happy Bad Panda Day to you all! It was a 5am start today but totally worth it because it was the Bad Panda party. Sarah McIntyre, author, illustrator and champion of #PicturesMeanBusiness, hosted the virtual launch alongside Team Faber.

Sheena and I talked through the creative process of creating Bad Panda before I did my first international reading from the book and Sheena led us through a Lin-drawalong.

And then mayhem. It was the ‘Do You Know Your Panda?’ quiz where Sheena and I were annihilated by everyone in the chatbox who clearly knew their pandas, (dogs, tapirs, skunks and drawings of Mean Cat).

We rounded off the event with questions from everyone and a long list of thank yous to all the Bad Pandas who helped get the book published. THANK YOU to absolutely everyone who came along and celebrated Bad Panda with Sheena and I – bear hugs to you all.

Day three of the Bad Panda blog tour stops at Book-Bound and their wonderful review of the book which you can read here.