One of our Year 3 students had a very exciting surprise in her mailbox last week. She had received a letter from one of her favourite authors and someone who is very popular in our library…David Walliams!! The letter had travelled via air mail all the way from England to Melbourne, Australia.
This student wrote to David Walliams on his website. David can’t reply personally to all of his fans, but it was still exciting to receive this letter.
We enjoyed listening to David’s letter and hearing that ‘Billionaire Boy’ is being made into a drama to be shown this Christmas on the BBC. We hope it will be shown here in Australia too as many of us have enjoyed watching ‘Mr Stink’ and ‘Gangsta Granny’.
The other very exciting news for fans of David Walliams who are impatiently waiting for his next book is that his new book called ‘Grandpa’s Great Escape’ is coming out on Thursday,September, 24th
Jack’s Grandpa… wears his slippers to the supermarket, serves up Spam à la Custard for dinner and often doesn’t remember Jack’s name But he can still take to the skies in a speeding Spitfire and save the day… An exquisite portrait of the bond between a small boy and his beloved Grandpa – this book takes readers on an incredible journey with Spitfires over London and Great Escapes through the city in a high octane adventure full of comedy and heart. Illustrated by the award-winning Tony Ross.
Now the first official performance of Kicking Goals For Readers has been performed I can publish this blog post…
It was a HUGE day for reading and football on Friday, June 19th at St Martin’s!
Excitement was bubbling to Grand Final fever pitch as our 21 classes gathered in our hall to watch the highly anticipated stage performance of Kicking Goals For Readersby footy authors Felice Arena, Michael Wagner and Adrian Beck. These popular authors whose footy books cover from P-6 are combining their many talents ‘to take the action from the page to the stage’…
Wearing our footy colours and passionately singing along to footy team songs everyone was in the footy spirit. The hall erupted with laughter as Felice Arena emerged doing his ‘Umpire Dance’ and some rather fancy footy tricks! The scene was set for a combination of Aussie Rules football, music, multimedia, books and lots of fun.
There were so many parts of the show to enjoy, including each author performing a unique version of his footy team song. Who would have thought “Good Old Collingwood” could be sung as a folk song and be surprisingly soothing? We laughed at the video of the authors taking on 1GC’s Egg Handball Challenge and an unlucky author who ended up with egg on his face. Felice helped our very own ‘Specky Magee’ in Year 6 show us how to take a slow motion Specky while we all had fun barracking silently in slow motion. Imagine a capacity crowd barracking like this on Grand Final day at the MCG!
We also enjoyed listening to each author speak about his books and writing journey and the positive messages each imparted about writing, following your dreams and having a passion for what you do. It was also interesting to hear about the different paths that led each of them to becoming authors and great to see them collaborating with their show.
One thing for certain is that we will never look at umpires in the same way again after watching the dance moves in the hilarious “Umpire Funk” led by Felice with our very own Mr O and Mr Z. We might have to try out some “Umpire Funk” on our Footy Day in September with Mr O leading the way with his groovy freestyle dance moves.At the end of the show we noticed that the windows in our hall had actually steamed up from all of the fun and excitement!
After using lots of energy performing, our authors happily greeted long lines of eager fans and generously spent the afternoon in our library signing books and chatting with each child. It was a delight to see the looks on children’s faces as they met Felice, Michael and Adrian. There was such a wonderful buzz at the end of the day as students rushed to tell their parents about the performance and show them their signed books! Our authors had definitely achieved their goal of Kicking Goals For Readers and ‘taking the action from the page to the stage’…
Enjoy watching some of the highlights of Kicking Goals For Readers
I use Twitter professionally to connect with other educators and love the opportunity it also provides to interact with authors like Felice, Michael and Adrian. When Felice asked if they could trial their show with our school before their first official performance I was surprised, excited (and a tad nervous), but in the end I was SO glad I said “Yes”! It provided me with a wonderful opportunity to do one of the most important jobs teacher librarians do…bringing children, books and authors together.
Thank you Felice, Michael and Adrian for an amazing experience for our school and a fabulous and fun celebration of books, reading and footy!
If you are free on Thursday, July 9th you might like to go along to Random Author Day at a Robinsons Book Shop near you and meet and have your books signed by authors Felice Arena and Damean Posner. Check below for times…
If you missed out on meeting these fabulous authors, they have left signed copies of their books at the Robinsons Book Shops mentioned above…
Over 10 years ago I invited Sofie Laguna to our school for an Author Visit. Sofie is also a trained actor and we had lots of fun watching her performance of her first ever published book called My Yellow Blanky.
Since then Sofie has written other fabulous picture books we have in our library including Too Loud Lily, On Our Way to the Beach and Stephen’s Music as well as Aussie Nibbles books Bad Buster and Ned’s Big Bush Walk. Sofie has also written these books for older readers Saving Aunt Marsha and Bird & Sugar Boy.
Sofie wrote historical fiction for the first time in her Meet Gracebooks for the Our Australia Girl series. On an occasion when I heard Sofie speak, she talked about the amount of research she did to ensure her books were accurate and how much she had learnt herself about the early 1800s. The Meet Grace books are very popular in our library because they allow readers to walk around in Grace’s shoes experiencing life and the hardships of the time through her eyes. Sofie has recently written Fighting Bones for the Do You Dare historical book series.
I was thrilled to hear last week that Sofie had won the Miles Franklin Award for her adult novel The Eye of the Sheep. The Miles Franklin Award is an incredible honour to win for an author as it recognises “a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases”.
Today I was lucky to meet Sofie when she signed a copy of her winning book for me at Robinsons Bookshop at Greensborough. I congratulated her on her award and loved hearing about how surprised, excited and honoured she was to receive the award. We also chatted about her children’s books which I’m glad she will continue to write. Sofie was so pleased to hear how much we enjoy reading her Meet Grace books and said to say hello to you all and to thank you for reading her books…
What a talented Australian author who can write fabulous books for both children and adults…thank you Sofie!
It was an absolute treat to see David Walliams at The Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne along with lots of very enthusiastic children holding copies of their favourite books.
You could feel the excitement in the air as we waited for David to appear on stage to talk with Meshel Laurie. David Walliams is very tall. He has a rich, deep voice, a very proper English accent and is very funny!
David began by telling us that it is a thrill to write children’s books and a wonderful responsibility. He likes that books last a long time and that they can be treasured (and you can keep writing as you get old!). He believes he is very lucky that his books have been illustrated by Quentin Blakeand Tony Ross who help bring his characters to life. David has written TV shows but he wasn’t sure he if he could write books. (I’m sure his readers are very glad he gave it a go!) Today, David Walliams is regularly called “The New Roald Dahl”. His favourite Roald Dahl book when he was growing up was ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.
Writing Tips….
David finds ideas anywhere and everywhere and always has a notebook handy to record his ideas
When he writes, David thinks of how he saw the world when he was a 12 year old boy
David says it’s a good idea to create a really good villain for your stories. The dreadful Aunt Alberta in Awful Auntieis his latest villain. We laughed out loud as he read how Aunt Alberta raised and trained her owl Wagner who is very much her ‘baby’ and they even wear matching pyjamas!!
Did you know…
David Walliams’ own grandmother was the idea for his book Gangsta Granny
His character Raj is based on David’s own newsagent owner just up the road from him
David’s favourite book that he has written is Mr Stink. (He surprised himself that he could write a tender story!)
David has met the Queen four times. He doesn’t know if the Queen knows she is in his book Gangsta Granny!
David plays the Prime Minister in the Mr Stink movie
Mr Stink is coming to Sydney as a stage production in 2016
Fans of David Walliams will be very excited to hear that he is currently working on his next book about a boy who helps his grandfather escape from a high security old people’s home…sounds like another fun adventure to me!
Click on the books below to visit The World of David Walliams
