Storylines hosted the Children’s Writers And Illustrators’ National Hui at Dilworth School, at the weekend, and it was jam-packed with incredible speakers from a line up of children’s writers and illustrators from across Aotearoa. I was invited to speak about writing graphic novels and talked about how The Terrible Trio series came to be and the mechanics of turning my …
The Storylines Story Circle at Te Manawa
I headed up to the big city of Auckland on Friday to speak at the Storylines Children’s Writers and Illustrators’ National Hui but first I stopped off at Te Manawa to join Sacha Cotter, Josh Morgan, Donovan Bixley, Melinda Szymanik and the fabulous staff of the library for story time. There was face painting, singing and of course a whole …
Storytime and Draw-along for The Line
Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in to join Farah and I for a storytime and draw-along featuring The Line, hosted by Rosie from Scholastic Book Club Live. It was so wonderful to share this very special book with you and read you the story – and even more special, to have Farah talk us through drawing the …
Happy Aotearoa Children’s Book Week!
It’s Aotearoa Children’s Book Week and today, with the amazing help of the City of Literature, I joined Andersons Bay Primary School and Kaikorai Primary School for some Terrible Trio fun. I started my morning at Andy Bay and read from The Terrible Trio. We then got to work creating brand new stories for Zeb the zebra, featuring toilets, the …
Weaving Words with the OLA
With National Poetry Day just on the horizon, I met with over fifty keen young writers, from around Dunedin, to talk about creating poems. The event was hosted by the awesome Otago Literacy Association and we had student teachers from the College of Education join us too. I spoke about writing poems and then the pupils got to creating their …
How to Stop a T-Rex from Eating your Socks is out now!
More bonkers dilemmas that can be solved with science and a bunch of brilliant biology experiments are out now! That’s right! Jess Bradley and I are back with the THIRD book in our Solved by Science series: How to Stop a T-Rex from Eating your Socks… Learn to: rescue your favourite football socks from a dinosaur, help Granny grow her …
The Line is out today
I’m so proud that The Line is finally officially out in the world. This book was written over four years ago when I was the University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence in 2022. ‘I would draw lines that would lasso us to our neighbours and keep us close for all time. I would draw lines …
The Terrible Trio with Theydon Bois School
I was back with Theydon Bois Primary School today and we were talking about The Terrible Trio! In our virtual visit we chatted about story-planning, terrible superpowers and how to create a story from a pair of socks, a coconut and a plastic cup. The brilliant pupils also had heaps of questions about my books and my characters and reminded …
We’ve only gone and won!
That’s right! How to Save your Granny from a Runaway Train won the Non-Fiction 7-11 year old category of the 2026 English 4-11 Picture Book Awards! I’m so thrilled for all of Team Granny who worked so hard on this book. The shortlist for our category was incredible so it’s extra special to have been chosen by the judges from …
Literature Across Borders
Today, I was up bright and early to join ‘Literature Across Borders’ with Bath Spa University and Ashoka University. Alexia and Megha hosted a panel with award-winning author Veera Hiranandani, super star screenwriter Nayanika Mahtani and little old me to talk about our experiences of writing books set during the Partition. We talked about our writing journeys, experiences within publishing …