Book Week over for another year
Back from Adelaide after a hectic Australian Children's Book Week - met some great teachers and librarians and even more great kids. Even met the editor of Too Much Stuff, which was fun, because we never met while we were working together.
Some of the teachers had read one or more of my books to their classes before the visit (the prize goes to one class who'd read 7 books!!) and of course those kids got even more out of the sessions.(So did I! It's hard to describe how much it means to meet the people I've written the book for, who love it in just the way I'd hoped. Ark in the Park is now older than some of the kids who were reading it, but it didn't seem to make any difference to how they felt.) And everyone in that 7-book class knew so much about my life I thought I could always ask them if I couldn't remember the details.
One of the most innovative ideas was the class who each came in with their own map of Nim's Island, which they'd coloured in and marked with drawings, comments and questions while the teacher read them the story. Some of their questions really tested me! I was glad I'd put so much thought into making sure all the technical details of the story made sense...
Mokie and Bik
I'll be launching Mokie and Bik (Australian edition) live in Albany, West Australia in September and in Mornington, Victoria, in October, but first there'll be an online launch the day the book is actually released, on Sep 4 as part of the 2006 Online Literature Festival.
I've therefore given Mokie and Bik their very own blog, so people can check the book out before the launch. Go to http://mokieandbik.blogspot.com (or follow the link in the sidebar).
Visiting Mt Scopus
On Monday I visited Mt Scopus junior campus to do workshops with Year 3's. What a great day! We wrote a story together in each class, and it was so much fun to see imaginations at work and the different ideas everyone came up with. I started them all with the same half sentence, but the three stories were wildly different. I can't wait to see the final versions, because they've promised to send me them to me when each class is done.
It was also fantastic to see the kids starting in on editing even while we were writing, because good writing is much more about how you work your idea out than just having a great idea to start with. So when a plot idea came up part way through the story, we went back and changed the first sentence, or whichever one needed to change, so that it led into the new idea.
And editing is exactly what I'm doing now, on the Nim's Island sequel. Just like the kids, I've finally sorted out a plot problem nearly at the end of the book, which will now mean going back and seeding its clues throughout the book. At least, I hope I've got it sorted out – I won't know for sure till I write it today!
