How exciting to stumble across such news. Apparently in November last year, Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter was a winner in the 2021 Shenzhen Reading Month ‘Top Ten Children’s Books of the Year’. Shenzhen Reading month is a large literary festival. Shenzhen is also home to the largest bookshop in the world. I am SO thrilled Dr Boogaloo has been awarded such an honour. It’s lovely to imagine kids in China enjoying a bit of Boogaloo. There’s also more exciting news to come about Dr Boogaloo but I’m not allowed to tell yet, so stay tuned…..

You can read all about the top ten books here….

The What On Earth Institute of Wonder comes out 31 August. I’m excited and nervous all at once…..

One elephant, one kakapo, one unlicensed teenage driver, one boy waiting for the world to end and a twelve-year-old girl with a very special gift.

Sal has always had an affinity with animals – especially the lost kind. But when two rare and endangered creatures appear out of nowhere, life takes a detour into strange and uncharted territory.

Join Sal, Bartholomew and Roy on a mind-boggling expedition into the secrets of the Animal Kingdom with only an invisible map of the human heart to guide them. (Unless, of course, you count the talking parrot.) What on Earth could possibly go wrong…?

Ah….I’ll let you in on a secret. A lot!

I’m so excited and nervous that The What on Earth Institute of Wonder is coming out on the 31st of August.  If you adore animals and don’t mind a laugh, I reckon you’re going to love it. Well I hope you are. And there’s plenty of that in there too. Hope.

Stay tuned over the coming months for some sneak peaks and stories behind the story…

It’s very exciting news!

Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter is being adapted for the stage as a musical by the frighteningly talented Yve Blake and Alice Chance.

Yve Blake

gotta love a girl who can pull off a koala-do

I’m trying not to get too excited because these things take time. And you should never count your musicals before the curtains part on opening night. But it’s hard not to get excited when you’ve heard the songs Yve and Alice have written. They’re beautiful and funny and moving too…

As a writer, hearing your characters turned into songs is completely magical.

And wait till you hear their ideas for Leonard! I have a feeling Leonard is going to love the limelight. He loves an audience, as you know!

Boy oh boy. It’s been a while. Forgive me for not posting but I’ve been out and about with Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter. And so much has happened, I’m not sure where to start!

Perhaps we’ll go back to Russ The Story Bus. Now THAT was fun. Russ the Story Bus is part of the SWF Festival of Moving Stories. It’s a big bus that travels round the countryside visiting schools and giving out brand new free books. I got to go cherry picking in Young – where I also ate too many prunes! Very NOT wise when you have long bus trips ahead. Sorry Mr Cheeseman. Mr Cheeseman was my driver! Luckily for me, Mr Cheeseman did not mind a prune himself so we made good company.

Mr Cheeseman likes BIG things.

He’s a very happy fellow and taking his picture with REALLY BIG things  makes him even happier. Note to self – only ever go on long road trips with very jolly people. So much fun!

Here’s Mr Cheeseman with a GIGANTIC tennis racquet in Barellan. Barellan is a tiny town where Aussie champion tennis player Evonne Goolagong grew up. (We made a special detour just to visit the gigantic racquet and we were very nearly late to school!)

And here’s a gigantic dog we saw in Yass! That’s a normal size dog next to him. You can just see the top of his head. I think Mr Cheeseman was too scared to stand next to this dog. Which was very sensible!

We also visited a gigantic guitar which made Mr Cheeseman as happy as a banjo player.

I love road trips. There’s something relaxing about being in transit. Going somewhere feels good.

And as well as seeking out GIGANTIC things, we did squeeze in a few school visits. The kids were so smart. It always blows me away how creative and clever kids are. We listened to different pieces of music and came up with ideas for stories and characters. Music is great for getting your magical thinking all fired up. Lots of writers use music to kickstart their imagination. If you get stuck with your creative writing you should try it.

Shoutout to Hay Public School, St Mary’s Primary School,  Cootamundra Public School, Young Public School, Young North Public School and Yass Public School. Thanks for having us! We had the best time!

It’s getting exciting folks!

It’s almost 2 October, the day Dr Boogaloo and The Girl Who Lost Her Laughter hits the shelves.

But what has got me almost more excited, chuffed even (I have always wanted to use the word chuffed) is something they call in the publishing world, a SHELF WOBBLER.

Now when I received the email from my publisher about said SHELF WOBBLER, I had no idea what a SHELF WOBBLER was!

At first I thought it must be some device that caused the shelf to wobble, which in turn caused my book to fall off the shelf whenever someone walked past. The person walking past would then pick up my book believing they had in fact caused it to fall off the shelf. ‘Ingenious! That should help sell a few more books,’ I thought to myself.

But it turns out I was wrong. That’s not what a SHELF WOBBLER is. Then I thought perhaps a SHELF WOBBLER is some sort of weird insect thingy found in book shops that lived on shelves and had a wobbly kind of walk.

Wrong again.

When I googled ‘insects + habitat = book shop’ it came up blank.

So then, despite the risk of looking like a total potato head, I just had to phone the publisher because I’d wasted a whole morning trying to figure out WHAT exactly a SHELF WOBBLER was!

Well, would you believe it, a SHELF WOBBLER, doesn’t wobble shelves at all. A SHELF WOBBLER, hangs off a shelf and wobbles. Its job is to attract your attention. It’s supposed to sort of say, “Hey, look over here, this book is a ripper!’

Here’s my SHELF WOBBLER. Unfortunately it’s a real world SHELF WOBBLER and not an online SHELF WOBBLER so it doesn’t wobble at all online. If you’re on an Ipad just jiggle it around and it should do a pretty good impersonation of a real life SHELF WOBBLER.

One of my favourite Facebook pages is Rare and Strange Instruments. Basically it’s a collection of videos of the strangest instruments you’ve ever seen. A lot of them are homemade.  The people who make them are musical inventors!

Like for instance, did you know you could make a bass guitar out of a couple of balloons?

Apparently you can! Check this out…

I bet you didn’t know toy cats could hold a tune either….

This guy must be a regular at The Boogaloo Family Clinic of Musical Cures!

I need a glass of water after watching that!

Well twang a banjo! some people can make music with just about anything!!