Famous last words in my last blog post. Shortly thereafter we went back into lockdown with Delta on the loose. Are we tired of it all? You betcha, but it’s our new reality and the sooner we adapt and change to manage the difficulties this global pandemic has thrown up, the better.
KidsBooksNZ asked some of us children’s book authors what we have done with our time and how we have felt about the past months. Read it here.
Today my publishers, Scholastic, emailed Peter Gilderdale and myself the happy news that The Little Yellow Digger and The Big Ship is at #1 on the New Zealand Best Sellers list! This is a first for me after 37 years in the business. Thank you to everyone who has bought it, it helps assure an income for me and gives me the confidence to keep on drawing! Here is a lovely interview with Peter about the book.
Scholastic have also received the first advance copies of ‘Marvin Makes a Friend’ written by the wonderful Nadia Lim and they will hit the shops on December 1st! So that’s Christmas sorted for all the littlest members of my extended family and hopefully yours too.
Next on my board is the cover for ‘Masher’ the junior fiction novel I wrote whilst in Dunedin on my writer’s residency. Because I’m an illustrator as well as a writer, I get to do my own cover! Masher is out in March 2022, published by Penguin Random House.
All in all, it’s been a productive year to date and as we hurtle towards Christmas and summer (hopefully – the weather is typically November in Wellington right now) I hope you are all doing well and keeping safe and that we all get to have a break with friends and family by the 24th December.
