The pattern is that there is no pattern ...

 So, for several reasons there was no public launch this time round for Moon and Sun, and honestly, it is a mixed blessing. Launches can be stressful things that are hard to land with the desired results. But watching your book arrive with no wine-glass-clinking, cake-eating celebration is equally daunting. Will anyone notice it has arrived?? As with all my paper babies, I am so proud of this story. It says and does some good and surprising things. And Malene Laugesen's illustrations elevate the story, magnifying and building on the emotion and detail of the text in a beautiful way. Truth is, a launch is only ever a small part of a book's debut. Plenty of work has been happening behind the curtains (thanks to the team at Upstart Press) to support Moon and Sun's arrival. Copies have been going out and about and some early reviews have been really lovely - thank you to Desna Wallace at BookTrailers4KidsandYA, NZ Booklovers, and KiwiReviews. I'm also being interviewed about the book for radio later in the week, and there is a chance to win a copy of the book in the Kids Club section of the current NZ TV Guide (20 - 26 Feb). And I finally get to wear the t-shirt with artwork by my eldest, which is a perfect fit for the book.

Welcome to the world Moon and Sun - I'm so happy you are here :-) 

And I have to say this book, a gentle, secretly science-y tale, is so different to the last thing I had published (the darkly funny and mischievous Sharing with Wolf). I am a technicolour dreamcoat, a collection, a museum of many things. I do worry that I am a bit unpredictable and that fans might want some reliable patterns to hold on to as they take a wild ride through my books. The only patterns you'll find are a distinct love of language, a desire for rhythm, and a guarantee that there will be layers of meaning, peelable and yet also intersecting. My next two picture books, My Elephant is Blue (illustrated by Vasanti Unka and coming out in May with Penguin, dealing with heavy feelings) and Batkiwi (illustrated by Izzy Joy Te Aho White and published in July by Scholastic, about being a hero) are also different. Perhaps the pattern is that there is no pattern. 

It would be lovely to talk about this. I sometimes envy adult writers chatting about their latest book with a wise and well read interviewer on a stage at a Writers Festival. This doesn't really happen to picture book writers. I've seen picture book and junior fiction writers interviewed on stage, or giving a talk, but these events are pitched at young readers who usually make up at least half the audience (and many of the rest are their guardians and minders and keepers). But like a writer of adult fiction, I too have ideas and influences and writing craft that are grown up things. Lots of writers for children do. And I am always sad that picture books are only ever seen as childish things. We don't talk enough about children's books outside our children's books circles. I think this needs to change - for the benefit of our children.