Oh, good GRIEF! An ex-student has alerted me to the fact that my website hasn’t been up-dated recently. I should be completely mortified over my six-month silence but I’m not. I care for Theo, our adored grandson every morning until lunchtime. Malcolm takes over in the afternoon.
This means that after lunch I have very few [...]
Hello again from the blushing author whose website is so often unattended and unloved. I’m only slightly apologetic! My grandson Theo is SO attended to and SO loved that things like websites fade into insignificance. I’m sure the entire world, including you, dear reader, would agree that in the general scheme of things focussing on [...]
Resurrection!
Helloooo! I’m ba-a-a-a-ck! Since December 2009, as a few of my benevolent readers may have observed, my ‘Hot’ News has turned ice-cold. I’ve been a disgrace to cyberspace for four whole months and really ought to be apologising, but you know what? A life lived is more fun than a life written down. If we [...]
End of Year High Note
So the year is coming to an end. Thank God. I hope never to have another year like it. I have spared you the details in the usual way that people do when they’re writing at Christmas, pretending that everything has been totally fabulous on every day [...]
I was involved, as usual, as an ambassador in South Australia’s Premier’s Reading Challenge in which children are given a medal for reading 12 books during the year. It’s a tremendous program which has increased children’s reading for pleasure, hurrah, as well as having a marked effect on their literacy. The premier, Mike [...]
Hard Times
There are only three of us in our tiny family and we’re devoted to each other, as you know, if you’ve been reading this website over the years. We’re a Goldilocks sort of family: Mother Bear, Father Bear and Baby Bear. When two of the bears are going through a lot, the [...]
‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away.’ (Anonymous)
Imagine, if you will, being an Australian author of children’s books and hearing that Leo and Diane Dillon, the royal couple of American children’s illustration, have agreed to paint the pictures in your [...]
May 3rd 2009
BOOK NEWS!
I know, I know. I once said NO MORE HOT NEWS! But my book news is hectic and I have to share it or burst.
Grand announcement: a new book, Hello Baby! appears in the USA on May 5th, 2009, and in Australia on June 1st 2009. I call it my ‘African’ [...]
Dear All-Who-Have-Inquired
We are fine. The fires were not in our state and even though they are still raging in Victoria, the next state to us, the smoke has not affected us.
It is true that in late January/early February we lived through the worst two-week heat wave since 1908 and our hottest day ever at [...]
East Timor
In mid-January I was fortunate enough to visit East Timor for the launch of my book WHOEVER YOU ARE which had been translated into Tetum, the local language. In Tetum it’s called: SÉ DE’IT MAK Ó. I could write a lot about the trip and how much East Timor reminded me of [...]
Good grief! A week of the new year gone already. Happy New Year! I know 2009 will be a terribly challenging year as the global financial crisis hits us all in various ways but hey, there’s nothing in the GFC to stop us from continuing to read to children. Many of us already [...]
Oh no. The horror. The total horror. I appear to have put my foot in it again. People in countries other than Australia please bear with me: this is an Australian story.
I have been away for a month. The last two weeks of that month were taken up with the American [...]
Oh dear. Hornets in their nests. I poked at them and now I can’t get them out of my head or my hair. So I have to bounce back briefly into my Hot News Space. Just this once…
I was interviewed, recently, for a feature article in my home town. In the [...]
October 14th 2007
Dear readers of the world
A funny story to start with…
In August I was at various schools in the South Australian countryside for the Premier’s Reading Challenge, a brilliant scheme run by Mike Rann, the premier (leader) of our state. One night I was interviewed on local television. The next morning, at the end [...]
Hello again…and again!
I promise if I didn’t have a life I’d keep this website and its hot news updated daily, rather than spasmodically.
But, astoundingly, there is a real world outside the internet in which people talk to each other face to face, again and again, and have good times and laughter, and learn [...]
Hello again, with blushes—
I often read other people’s websites and always tut-tut if they’re out of date. So go on, feel free to tut-tut over mine. I think I last updated it in late February but I must have done something technologically stupid because I see no February entry here! The fact that I’m 61 [...]
Hello everyone!
I jumped into bed at 20 seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve and opened the very fat novel I was reading and loving, to make sure—as Malcolm and I clinked wine glasses to welcome in the New Year—that I’d be starting off 2007 as I mean to continue: reading, reading, reading. Reading is [...]
Merry Christmas, everyone!
I note in our papers that much of the world, both Christian and non-Christian, is about to enjoy Christmas this year: ie ignoring the religious message but giving gifts to each other anyway, so my greeting is indeed to the whole world.
I will be updating my Hot News properly within [...]
Too busy and too happy to write any news, mostly because nothing has happened apart from my education/speaking work in Australia which I absolutely adore, and a wonderful holiday on Lord Howe Island. I have taken up bike riding again for the first time in 40 years and now have an extra excuse not [...]
Hello, hello!
Let’s not even discuss the guilt-ridden lateness of this up-date since it wastes time. It must be obvious that if it hasn’t been done recently I must have been busy doing other things like having fun communicating with thousands of live people in the breathing world at various venues and events around Australia and [...]
Life is normal. I am tired, tired, tired!
Four celebrations in three weeks! I kept thinking I’d update this Hot News site when life returned to normal but I now realise that there’s no such thing as ‘normal’. This is it…
Survivor!
Hot, Cool and Cold News
Hello everyone!
I feel as if I’ve been all over Australia since I last wrote. I haven’t. It’s only been Sydney for the Read Aloud Summit, see below; Melbourne for a teachers’ seminar with Scholastic, whom I adore working for; and Newcastle, for the annual convention of the VIEW organisation which was terrific – all women, 900 of them from all over Australia, mostly retired and doing good and true things for the disadvantaged in their respective communities. I spoke at the convention dinner and needless to say I was wearing my best clothes, but in comparison with the VIEW ladies I was spectacualrly under-dressed. It made me nervous. I am rarely nervous. I stuck very closely to my prepared speech (I think I even clung to it!) whereas usually I diverge and extemporise in a light- hearted manner.
It’s full moon and I am OVER the moon with happiness.
Where Is The Green Sheep? has won not one, but two awards. It never rains but it pours! The Speech Pathology Association of Australia awarded ‘Green Sheep’ the Book of the Year, as the best book for Language Development in Young Children. [...]
What I did on my holidays…
Yes, I have been on holiday. It’s true that I went to America to the American Libraries Association convention. I also went to ALOUD, a children’s book festival in Toronto. Both places had record breaking heat but as always the people I met and worked with made me [...]
Hello everyone!
It’s a freezing winter’s night in Adelaide, June 22nd 2005, and it’s rather late at night and I’m going to America again in the morning, early, but I didn’t want to leave before I said goodbye, as it were.
It’s been a frenetic month since I came back from my last trip to [...]
Hello again!
I meant to write this on the Anzac Day long weekend in Australia. I love a long weekend for any reason although I’m sorry soldiers had to die for this one. (Dear foreigners: look up Anzac Day on Google. It will tell you a lot about the Australian character and something [...]
I’ll fill in the details later, but this is one of the secrets I couldn’t tell you last week.
Here I am with the handsome Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark in the Sydney Opera House on Monday, March 7th. I was nervous and excited beyond belief. The Crown Prince has appointed me as one of [...]