Have you ever dreamed of owning so many books there's hardly enough room for you and them in your bedroom? I have. I'd like to own so many books that I have to sleep with my feet sticking out the window.

If you're like me, now's your chance to win hundreds of books. To celebrate (OK, publicize) the publication of my new book Teacher's Pet, Puffin Books are holding a Morris Gleitzman Quiz. The prize is $6000 worth of Puffin books, $2000 worth for the winner and $4000 worth for their school. I got very excited when I heard, but then they explained I'm not allowed to enter.

The people who'll have the best crack at the prize will be people who either (1) have read all my books or (2) have a group of friends who've read all my books between them or (3) can thumb through my books really quickly in a library or bookshop. That could be you! You can find out more about the Morris Gleitzman Quiz, and enter, by clicking here.

Just think of it. Hundreds of books. Books piled on top of your wardrobe. Books bursting out of your sock drawer. Books cascading out of your room and flooding the house!

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit emotional. Authors always get like this when they've just published a new book. I'm very excited, but a bit anxious too. Teacher's Pet is out in the big wide world now, standing on its own 191 pages. I've asked it to be polite and to remember its manners, but sadly my books don't always do that. So if a copy comes to visit you and behaves in a way that causes you to gasp, or laugh so hard your chocolate milk comes out your nose, please don't be too cross with it.

If you'd like to sample a bit to see if your nostrils are up to it, click here to read chapter one.

Oh, by the way, when I say big wide world I'm afraid for now I just mean the big wide world of Australia and New Zealand. But Teacher's Pet will be arriving in Britain early in 2004 and other countries after that.

I should also confess something else to those of you who don't live in Australia. Sadly the quiz is only for people who live in Oz, for legal and logistical reasons I don't completely understand (I'm not even sure what logistical means). But if you live somewhere else, I'm working on it. I'm encouraging my publishers in other parts of the world to have their own Morris Gleitzman Quiz. More details later, I hope.

Meanwhile, if your bedside lamp has just blown up or the cat has eaten your torch batteries, slightly better news. Teacher's Pet is also out on audio cassette and CD. If you'd like to hear me read the first chapter, click here.

New audio cassettes are also out of several of my other books - Misery Guts, Worry Warts, Puppy Fat, and Belly Flop read by me, and Blabber Mouth, Sticky Beak and Water Wings read by the magnetically-voiced Mary-Anne Fahey. The first chapters of all these will be added to the Morris On Audio section. If they're not all there yet, they will be soon.

That's all from me for now, because I have to go and do what authors do when they have a new book out – travel, talk, dust the shelves in bookshops, that sort of thing.

I'm in the Northern Territory for three weeks until the middle of June, so if you're a NT person you'll have to live in a community of less than about three people for me not to be visiting you. Details from any public library in the territory or Darwin's main public library on 08 8927 2280.

Hope to meet you, either out and about, or in the pages of Teacher's Pet.

Till next time, oo-roo and happy reading (and quiz-entering)

4 June 2003