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. …
British Science Week with Mr Dilly
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 …
Happy World Book Day!
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 …
Thank you for all the book love in 2025!
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 …
Granny made the School Reading List’s Children’s Books of the Year 2025 shortlist!
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 …
Salon Reading Series with NZSA
It was so fantastic to share a platform with Gillian Torckler, Kath Beattie and Sam Montgomerie and talk to members of the New Zealand Society of Authors Otago Southland about our journeys into writing for children. There was a wealth of experience ranging from educational books to fiction to non fiction to poetry and more and it was great to …
Why Not? and The Terrible Trio Story Workshops
Today, I visited Halfway Bush School to meet all the pupils from Year 1 to Year 6. First up were Year 1 and 2 and I got to share Why Not? with the pupils and surprise them with all the interesting library facts I had been collecting whilst researching the book. After a delicious morning tea of cheese and choccie …
Happy Diwali!
Happy Diwali to all of you! I hope your year is full of light, love and stories. It’s made my day to hear about so many of you sharing The Night Before Diwali with your loved ones and in your classrooms. Keep up the awesome reading! And those of you doing the activities from All About Diwali do share your …
BookTrust: Great Books Guide 2025 to 2026
I’m so pleased that BookTrust has selected Reggie Rabbit: The Great Carrot Heist to be part of their Great Books Guide 2025-2026. The selection of 100 books is a fabulous guide to help stock your libraries or even your Christmas stockings. Explore the full collection here.
The Serious Business of Funny Books
Scholastic invited me to share my thoughts on funny books. You can have a read of the post here.