Swapna Haddow's new book - Bad Panda; and Zac's book review blog

Kia Ora Woodlands Park School,

Remember when Swapna Haddow visited our school? 

Well, Swapna is launching a new book in NZ in September. To celebrate, Zac McCallum, (an NZ school librarian), will be doing a virtual book launch.

Details: Wednesday 1 September at 10.30 am. Zac says "Please join us ... to hear about this hilarious book." 

Here is the Zoom link: 

Zoom meeting

Meeting ID: 968 4815 4070

Passcode: DrKh9U

Zac McCallum is a school librarian in Christchurch. He has an excellent blog where he reviews children's books. It is well worth visiting.

It's called My Best Friends Are Books.

Zac also says, "NZ kids and YA bloggers are also part of the Bad Panda NZ Blog Tour starting next week. The graphic with the schedule is below"

Swapna Haddow wowed Woodlands Park School on the Storylines National Story Tour

Swapna Haddow is the multi-awarding winner author of the Dave Pigeon series. She also writes the Ballet Bunnies series, picture books, middle-grade fiction and is currently working on non-fiction. Swapna visited our school as part of the Storylines National Story Tour. What outstanding work you are doing at Storylines Charitable Trust  - bringing authors to schools!

"The tour is funded by Storylines Children’s Literature Charitable Trust as part of the Storylines Festival. Storylines has run their national festival since 1993 with the aim of bringing together children's writers, illustrators, poets and storytellers with their readers and audiences, to enjoy books and reading, and to encourage literacy." - Storylines

Swapna kept the year 0 - 6 children in our school captivated - with an interactive reading of My Dad is a Grizzly Bear, followed by a demonstration on how to draw a grizzly bear. Swapna gleaned tips from the illustrator, Dapo Adeola. Soon all of the children had drawn their own grizzly bear.

There was a question and answer time - and the children asked interesting questions - like "What inspires you to write your stories."

Then, Libby, the organiser whisked Swapna on to meet up with the van, ready for the next school. There were going to be two more schools that day! I take my hat off to you all.

I was also really proud of the children of Woodlands Park, who behaved beautifully.

Thank you so much!

Kate