What a great way to start off a new round of school visits from Phuket.

My first visit to Singapore in early November was a resounding success thanks to my host schools and their wonderful, enthusiastic and welcoming librarians, teachers and students.

At Eton House School, the innovative and energetic Christina Simpson and Noraini Ali  held their ‘humour’ Book Week with a different ‘dress–up’ theme to set the tone for each day. Tireless enthusiasm, jokes galore, and lots of fun for all. ‘Mischief at the Waterhole’ fitted the theme perfectly and brought smiles and laughter to everyone – teachers included! A big thank you to these wonderful ladies for hosting me and to Christina and Dave for making it possible by having me to stay. Thank you so much!

Chatsworth International  School was also a delight and my thanks go to Tamara Serong and Grace Hudson for organising the visit – everything went wonderfully smoothly with all classes participating with gusto. We ‘created’ the storm in ‘Patrick’s Birthday Message’ in splendid style, ‘swam’ with Cosmos, found the camouflaged Chameleons with some careful searching, and laughed with Mischievous Monkey at the animals struggling into the wrong coats. A really enjoyable, fun and memorable day.

The ‘Dulwich Ducks’ at Dulwich College were the ‘icing on the cake’ thanks to Fiona Shea and their teachers. I never expected to be working with tiny tots but these little ones – some of them under three years old– were incredible and tremendous fun to be with; attentive, engaged and so responsive. They all loved Patrick and he was thrilled by their performance of ‘The Parrot Dance’ and enjoyed more than hundred parrot hugs. 

I’ll be back in January to visit Tanglin Trust School – looking forward to it!

Back in 2016, I posted on Facebook about a Mongolian lady working in a school in Bangkok who asked me whether I would agree to have my book ‘The Chameleon Who Couldn’t Change Colour’ translated into Mongolian. 

“Of course,” I said, “that would be wonderful, but you know it’s in rhyme, don’t you? Will that be a problem?”

“Not at all,” she said, “it’s very easy to rhyme in Mongolian.”

So that was that. I sent her the files with no text and a few months later,  a couple of copies of Chameleon turned up duly translated. And apparently it’s now on sale in Ulaanbaatar.

Since that post, the Shark Guardian charity, for whom ‘Sharks Our Ocean Guardians’ was written, have had that little book translated into Thai, and more recently, a friend in Italy, Irene Bernacchi has made a wonderful translation of the same book into Italian — ‘Gli Squali Custodi dei Nostri Oceani’.

A German version is also in the pipeline and over the last few months, a Dutch friend in Phuket, Pim Hoogeveen, has made a great job of translating three of my other books: Cosmos the Curious Whale (Cosmos de Nieuwsgierige Walvis),  Mischief at the Waterhole (Onrust bij de Waterplaats) and The Chameleon Who Couldn’t Change Colour (De Kameleon die niet van kleur kon veranderen).

While the Thai version of ‘Shark’ is only available through SharkGuardian.org, and the Mongolian version of Chameleon is only in Ulaanbaatar, the Dutch and Italian translations of my books are now available as paperbacks on Amazon.

And that’s not all, Irene in Italy is currently translating the second shark book, Jed’s Big Adventure, so watch this space. (I’m hoping there will be some more Dutch versions too . . .)