He'll dance all over you if you give him half a chance. And, what's more, he knows kung fu. Plus he's got a lot of charisma, so he's pretty hard to resist.

Toucan Can, written by Juliette MacIver and published by Gecko Press, is turning into a book even as you read this. The illustrations are all done and dusted, the amazing designer has worked her magic with the cover and text layout, and the whole shebang is being sent away to be magically printed with whatever arcane leprechaun-powered devices they use to do that sort of thing. I thought that now, in the midst all the therapeutic things I do to aid my recovery after meeting a tough deadline, in between sips of champagne, during the pauses in the interpretive dance routine devised by a troupe of intelligent Himalayan Mountain Ponies and a dozen carefully trained chickens, while the orchestra in my bathroom is pausing to tune the double bass and my personal French chef is sauté-ing more truffles for the souflee, NOW would be the perfect time to write a blog post about why Toucan nearly killed me. 

The Society of Children's Book Writer's and Illustrators is staging an exhibition at The Brisbane Library  "Journey of a Book: Celebrating Books from idea to publication", a series of glass cases in which authors and illustrators display paraphernalia from the process of creating one of their books - early drafts, letters to publishers, inspirational objects and images that first got their imaginations sparking

Right now I'm working away, illustrating  the American Girl "Girl of the Year" books for 2013. I can't tell you anything about them, but I can show you the Girl of the Year books I did for 2011 - Aloha Kanani!  and Good Job Kanani!