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…
Wendy Orr is a Canadian-born Australian writer. Her books for children and adults have been published in 27 countries and won awards around the world. Nim’s Island and Nim at Sea have also become feature films, starring Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin (Nim’s Island) and Bindi Irwin (Return to Nim’s Island.) Her latest book is Cuckoo’s Flight, a companion to the highly acclaimed Bronze Age novels Dragonfly Song and Swallow’s Dance. Read full bio
