Bigfoot, Yeti and Capybara shortlisted in children’s choice awards

The shortlists for the NSW and Victoria children’s choice book awards – the KOALAS and YABBAS – were released today. I’m stoked to see that two of my books were shortlisted in the Picture Story Book category!

Bigfoot vs Yeti: A Love Story and Happy Barry Capybara: Gone Bananas were both shortlisted.

Big thanks to all the young readers who nominated my books for the awards, and to the teachers and librarians who organised voting in their schools!

And congrats to everyone with a shortlisted book. There are so many great ones on the list this year. You can see all the shortlisted books in the poster below.

Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that I got to do the artwork for this year’s poster; it was heaps of fun to have Stella from Stellarphant doing a spacewalk with the mascot of the YABBAs (a mouse) and the KOALAs (a koala of course). See below for the full art.



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Last events for 2025


Nov 23: Young Readers’ Day Out

Are you a young reader? Do you enjoy a day out? Well funnily enough there’s this event coming up that’s perfect for young readers who enjoy a day out, and you wouldn’t believe what it’s called …

Join me as well as Andy J Alexander, Maria Blackman, Cristy Burne, Joanne Colely, Steve Heron, Suzanne Ingelbrecht, Julia Lawrinson, Frané Lessac, Susan Lu, Kristy Nita Brown, Sandi Parsons, Alexander Thorpe and Renée Treml. We’ll be reading a bit of our books, and signing copies, and there’ll be goodie bags and book discounts and general bookish awesomeness!

DATE: Sunday 23rd November
TIME: 10:30am-12:30pm
WHERE: State Library of WA
TICKETS: $20 + booking fee (includes entry for up to 6 people, $20 voucher at Boffins pop-up bookshop, and gift bags)
BOOKINGS: essential via trybooking.


Nov 25: YABBA online session

I’m running an online session for Victorian schools through YABBA!

All Victorian Government primary & secondary schools are YABBA members in 2025; you can register for the session through the members area of the YABBA website.

Other schools can also access the session, as long as they have a YABBA membership.

DATE: Tuesday 25th November
TIME: 9:30am (AEDT)
WHERE: online
COST: included with YABBA membership
REGISTER: via the YABBA website.