Hi guys. I hope you’re well.
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, but because so many people scattered themselves across a multitude of social platforms last year, I decided to relaunch this news blog. At the start of each month I will post any news I have on activities, competitions, events, projects and new books. This way it’s much easier for you to check for new downloadable activities, competitions and such.
From my website analytics I can see that many people are searching online for Mr Panda class activities, so that’s something I would like to address this year. At present there are two downloadable Mr Panda activities on my site. I know there are loads of Mr Panda activities available from other websites but I’d like to make more available here.
Dolly’s charity has included Steve’s books several times before.
Speaking of Mr Panda, this year he is 10 years old, which means that many of the children who read Please Mr Panda in 2015 are now teenagers.
And today Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library announced that Please Mr Panda has been included in their 2025 program. This means that children up and down Australia will receive a copy. This is the third time that the charity has chosen one of my books. Dolly’s charity has given a mind-blowing number of books away to children. In the UK alone they have mailed six million books to children. Incredible.
For those of you familiar with my website you may have noticed a few updates including more activities, and many of the pages have been updated with more info. For example, The Queen’s Hat activities, which were taken down a couple of years ago, are once again available to download, here. And all the colourful Rainbowsaurus activities are available here. Mr Panda activities are here.
Regarding book tours, I plan on doing two UK tours this year. The first one will be for schools who can’t afford Author visits and the second will be in June. I’ll provide more details in my next blog post, at the start of February.
I am going to Portugal in February to present a plenary at the APPInep (Portuguese English Teachers Association) Seminar in Leiria which I’m looking forward to. But at the moment I don’t have any other overseas plans, except for attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
I will just finish this post with an update on last year’s creative competition. Yesterday I presented the award-giving ceremony at Swindon Central Library with Swindon Outreach Librarian Debbie. Attendees included 13 of the 14 winners and their familes. I received over 500 ‘Marvellous Monster’ entries, so choosing 14 winners (one for each library) wasn’t a quick process. It was great to put names to ‘monsters’! All the entries are on display in Swindon Central Library. The competition, now in its 10th year, is for library members within the Borough of Swindon. This year’s competition theme will be announced on my website in June.
13 of the 14 winners of last year’s ‘Marvellous Monster’ competition
I think that’s it for now.
Bye for now!
Steve