Best-selling author's heartfelt thank you to New Zealand

Westlake Girls High School librarian Megan Davidson collected 5c coins for John Green, author of the hugely successful books The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns. He had a new book coming out, Turtles All The Way Down, that features the tuatara and he tweeted an unusual request: "... anyone in New Zealand have a large amount of NZ nickels. I'm in the market for some."

Megan made it her mission to find the coins and she did. She took 8000 coins to America in a suitcase (they weighed 23kg) and mailed them to him (which cost $500). "He paid me back for that," she says.

"Green went on tour for three weeks promoting his new book Turtles All the Way Down. The audience had an option to fill out a question card for John to answer onstage. If they filled out a card, they received a tuatara coin ... His assistant recently contacted me and said John wanted to donate to an organisation of my choice, so I chose Tiritiri Matangi, which has a tuatara colony."

And he made this video to say thanks!

Source: Sideswipe, NZ Herald