“pure joy … silly, expressive and full of laugh out loud moments. This was reread twice in one sitting because they wanted to look again. One of our favourites!” – @playful.childhood, Instagram
You can find a copy at your local indie bookshop or online – links below.
Happy Barry Capybara: Gone Bananas
🇦🇺🇳🇿 Australia/NZ edition, published by Scholastic Australia, Feb 2026 ISBN: 9781761725296 (hardback)
Happy Barry Capybara is the most chilled-out animal on the savannah. But when his friend the cheeky squirrel monkey, Harry, and his cousins are fighting over the last banana, Barry is left to decide who will get it. Which monkey will win the favour of Barry? Or will Barry have a new lesson to teach them about what it means to share?
I’m honoured to have some artwork included in the 2026 SQUIGL calendar! But the artwork isn’t just mine – it’s a collab between me and a kid living in regional Queensland called Will Thomas.
SQUIGL Club is an awesome online drawing group for kids in regional Queensland. It was developed by author-illustrator Andy Geppert along with Somerset Storyfest and the Longreach School of Distance Education.
Andy had a brilliant idea – let’s raise funds for regional kids to visit a writers festival, and let’s sell calendars to do it! Each month’s artwork is an artistic collaboration between a kid living on a remote property and a professional illustrator. The kids each drew a bird or a flying creature, then the illustrators worked it into a schmick piece of art.
And now you can take the artwork home with you! The 2026 SQUIGL Club Art Calendar looks great on kitchen walls, fridges – even dunny doors.
Check out the illustrators involved: Niña Nill, Sami Bayly, Peter Cheong, Matt Stanton, Mandy Foot, Natasha Carty, Terry Whidborne, Tony Flowers, Brent Wilson, Kate Isobel Scott, Andy Geppert, and me!
All proceeds support literacy in regional communities by funding transport and tickets to regional Somerset Storyfest events in Longreach, St George, and Emerald.
Here’s a little bit about my piece for the calendar. I started off with Will Thomas’ excellent drawing of a toucan …
… and ended up with a tree FULL of toucans! Can you spot Will’s initial drawing in there?
I’ll show some more process in a later post.
In the meantime, why not hit the link and order yourself a whizz-bang, feel-good 2026 calendar?
I love seeing how words and particularly sound effects get translated into other languages. My graphic novel Gastronauts has been released in Türkiye as Gastronotlar, which means we get to find out how farts (and burps) sound in Turkish!
Need another sneak peek into Secret Agent Mole book 2: The Boar Identity?
Introducing Special Agent Dana Skunky (a.k.a. our favourite Helena Hippo, undercover in the FBI).
Unfortunately, her trenchcoat comes with a super accurate skunk-like smell: enough to make a gorilla faint! Luckily Max and Bug don’t seem too affected by the unpleasant odour (perhaps they’re used to bad smells?)
See below for a teeny tiny excerpt from The Boar Identity, when Max and Bug first get a whiff of Helena’s stinky trenchcoat, leading them to give it a more appropriate nickname.
In the latest instalment of Secret Agent Mole, Star Division has discovered a magical meteorite with anti-gravity powers – and Dr Nude will stop at nothing to get his naked little hands on it, including brainwashing a Star employee!
Here’s a sneak peek of the latest instalment in my Secret Agent Mole series -watch out Neil Hamstrung!
In the latest instalment of Secret Agent Mole, Star Division has discovered a magical meteorite with anti-gravity powers – and Dr Nude will stop at nothing to get his naked little hands on it, including brainwashing a Star employee!
James Foley 