The 91-Storey Treehouse launch

On Tuesday August 8th, the fans of The Treehouse series by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton were bursting with excitement all over Australia! It was FINALLY the release day for their hugely anticipated sixth book The 91- Storey Treehouse.

Some very lucky students from our school attended The 91- Storey Treehouse book launch after school last Tuesday afternoon at the Melbourne Town Hall. One of the mums said that the line waiting to go into the Town Hall was half way up Collins Street. It was like lining up for a rock concert! Well, Andy and Terry are the rock stars of Australian children’s books and it is fabulous that they have children lining up to meet them because they write books that kids want to read and make reading fun!

We heard that Andy and Terry played a great trick on the audience when they told them close their eyes and imagine being in the world’s most powerful waterfall and then they got out water guns and sprayed the audience! They also had fun playing ‘Spin and Win’ with kids from the audience and there were also huge hairy spiders and rainbows….which will all make sense when you read their book!

These two lucky people had no idea they were going to the book launch when their mum collected them from school. Imagine their excitement when they were told…

These boys lined up after the book launch for over an hour for an opportunity to have their photo taken with Andy, Terry and Jill. One of these boys also met Sally Rippin a few weeks ago…I wonder which author he will go to meet next?

This Treehouse fan couldn’t wait to start reading his copy of  The 91- Storey Treehouse before the book launch even started! This what he wrote about the book launch…

On the 8th of August, we went to The 91-Storey-Treehouse book launch. I went with my friend Ben. My favourite part was the big red button because I didn’t know what it was going to do. Afterwards we went to a restaurant. it was good! 

 

The Yeo-Low Medal 2017

The Yeo-Low Medal for Best and Fairest Reader is back in 2017!

This is the third year for our Yeo-Low Medal Reading Challenge that was started by our author friend Adrian Beck. You can read how it all started hereAdrian has supported and encouraged our Yeo-Low Medal readers each year including last year when he organised a surprise message for our readers. Adrian also brings lots of fun to our Yeo-Low Medal Award Ceremony as you can see in 2015 and with Felice Arena in 2016.

Reading for our Yeo-Low Medal is held in Term Three.  It is a Reading Challenge that combines our love of Australian Rules Footy and reading. The Yeo-Low Medal is almost as coveted as the Brownlow Medal! Everyone who successfully completes the Reading Challenge receives a certificate and a chance to go in the draw to win our Indigenous football (a yellow one this year). Each reader is also in contention to win our prestigious Yeo-Low Medal for Best and Fairest Reader.

 

Students from Prep- Year 6 can participate in the Yeo-Low Medal by reading the books in the challenge based on the Book Week theme and completing a creative response to one of the books.

Enjoy participating in our Yeo-Low Medal Reading Challenge and have fun escaping to everywhere with books…

An Alien Zoo workshop with Adrian Beck and Heath McKenzie

This week I caught up with one of our Year Three students who along with a handful of other keen St Martin’s students went along to a workshop during the school holidays with the talented and funny Adrian Beck and Heath McKenzie. It was a writing and illustrating workshop based on their new novel The Alien Zoo…and You

 This is what our GUEST BLOGGER had to say…

Heath and Adrian began by explaining how they made the book. Adrian’s ideas came from visiting the animals at the zoo with his daughters and that got his imagination going. Heath explained that he does a rough sketch of an alien and then a good copy over the top and then adds the details and colour. He drew an alien from the book and used three of the kids in the workshop as a ‘human easel’.

We also had fun acting out being aliens from the book using objects from a basket. I had to be a flurp alien from Mars and they communicate with burps. Heath and Adrian mixed up ingredients to make a mixture that would make me do flurp burps. They added coca cola, milk, pepper, tuna, mayonnaise  and ice magic – gross! Luckily I didn’t have to drink it because Adrian and Heath played a game of  ‘Paper, Scissors, Rock’ to decide who the loser would be and that person had to drink the mixture…Adrian lost!

Adrian and Heath brainstormed ideas to create aliens with us and we used those ideas to create our own aliens. This is the alien I created.

Thank you Adrian and Heath for so much fun and thank you Heath for not making me drink the flurp burp mixture!

Book Week: Escape to Everywhere

This year’s Book Week theme is Escape to Everywhere. Books are like escape hatches and portals that allow us to escape to places real and imaginary, backwards and forwards in time, to walk in other people’s shoes and provide us with experiences and we may never have in our real lives.

Our library Book Week display was inspired by one of my favourite picture books A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. Last week the Year 3-6 classes read this book and were captivated by the amazing images created using text from some of the classics of literature. We had some great conversations about where books can take us which we will be creatively exploring during our Book Week term in the library. Students were concerned about using real book pages in the display, but I explained our old smelly library book has been recycled or up-cycled and used creatively to represent a sea of stories, an ocean of adventures or whatever their imagination wants it to be….

Our Book Week celebrations include our Book Week Parade at 9.10am on Wednesday, August 23rd and then we can escape into some books when we return to school in the evening for our Escape to Everywhere Story Night (7-8pm). On Friday, August 25th the P-2 classes will have a morning visit from Anna Walker the winner of Book of the Year (Early Childhood) in 2016 for her picture book Mr Huff .

Don’t forget to join in our annual Yeo-Low Medal Reading Challenge and our Creative Book Week Challenge – you will find posters about these in the library and around the school.

We have a fun and creative term ahead celebrating reading and books!

A Child of Books Book Trailer:

Where do your favourite stories take you?

Meeting Sally Rippin

I was thrilled to hear via email while I was in Portugal and also when I returned to school that ‘half of St Martin’s’ turned up to meet author Sally Rippin during the school holidays when she visited Greensborough Plaza! I was told the line was very long and that some people patiently waited for over 40 minutes to meet Sally and have a copy of her new book Polly and Buster signed as their well as much loved copies of Billie B. Brown and Hey Jack! It is always exciting to meet one of your favourite authors and I’m sure that Sally was equally thrilled to meet so many of her readers on the day.

A HUGE thank you to one of our Year 2 students who had our library copy of Polly and Buster signed and was lucky to meet Sally and have her photo taken with her.

This keen Year One student was first in line to meet Sally. He has been reading his way through the Hey Jack! series this year and is now reading his signed copy of Polly and Buster.

These are some of our excited Year One students lined up ready to meet Sally!

Two excited sisters who came along to meet Sally. 

A family of Sally Rippin fans.

If you had your photo taken with Sally and would like me to put it here on our LRC Blog then please email it to me at smotlrc@gmail.com