Donut Squad TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Please consider this your advance notice

I’ve been out on the road a lot this year, doing book festivals, school visits, etc, and as I do those kind of in-person events I like to keep a kind of informal running tally of what kind of questions kids are asking me. At the moment there is a real flurry of “WHY DID MEGA ROBO BROS HAVE TO END?” (short answer: because it was the end?), but over the last year or so the undisputed #1 FAQ has been: “are you going to make a Donut Squad book?” And so I am happy to reveal the exciting news that…

…we have in fact made a Donut Squad book! The first one is called Donut Squad: TAKE OVER THE WORLD, and it is an impossible and ridiculous thing. It’s certainly the silliest thing I have ever done and, honestly, it may in fact be the silliest thing *anyone* has ever done. Needless to say, I am very proud of it.

It comes out in May next year, and is available to pre-order now, BUT WAIT THAT’S NOT ALL! Not only will there be a regular edition, available from all the regular places, but Waterstones are going to have an EXCLUSIVE LIMITED EDITION:

…with a sheet of Donut Squad STICKERS in!

It is genuinely absurd how excited I, a middle-aged man, am about this, but there we are. STICKERS! Why wait or take the crazy risk of forgetting to buy it later, when you could put your mind at rest by pre-ordering it now! Pre-orders help authors, and are hugely appreciated round these parts. Thank you in advance!

A heads-up that It is a VERY BIG WEEK for my weird little donut guys in The Phoenix next week (SPOILERS), and then it is a very big YEAR for them next year (SPOILERS), so if somehow you have managed to avoid avoid getting on the donut (/bagel) train so far, I do hope you’ll check out the book when it comes out. I think I can safely reveal here that I took a bit of convincing that a whole book of Donut Squad was a thing that could or should exist, let alone how we’d deal with the sheer practical impossiblity of converting the fourth-wall-breaking metafictional lunacy of the Donut-Bagel war in the Phoenix into book form, but… we have? And I think it is really… good? One prominent early reader apparently described it as “genuinely hilarious and actually deranged.” Or maybe was it “actually hilarious and genuinely deranged?” Either way, I’ll take it. Did I mention, pre-orders help authors?

Oh hey, while I’m here: there is a great piece by the brilliant children’s writer Sharma Jackson over on the Guardian, in response to the alarming figures in a recent National Literacy Trust report about children reading for pleasure (tl;dr: way too many aren’t). I completely agree with the main points made in the piece, about supporting children and encouraging their tastes, whatever works for them, and anyway I was delighted and honoured to see Mega Robo Bros recommended in this context as one of ‘10 page-turners to get kids reading’.

Do go read the whole thing, and don’t forget that Mega Robo Bros: FINAL FORM is available to pre-order now! What’s that old saying? Pre-orders help authors? I’m sure I heard that somewhere.

Okay thanks bye xx