On Wednesday when I checked my blue tub for messages, I found a package addressed to me and when I flipped it over the sender was Felice Arena!
What a surprise to find a copy of Felice’s latest Sporty Kids books, Handball and Tennis and some bookmarks!
Felice also signed both of our books with a message. Here is our Handball book with one of Felice’s fans (who has some ideas of his own for some more Sporty Kids books)…
I wish Felice could have heard the cheers and excitement when I showed the Year Twos our copies of his books on Thursday in their library classes! We voted on which book to read and decided on the Handball book. We laughed in one class when two of the main characters, Luca and Stefan were actually sitting on the floor next to each other!! What are the chances of that happening?
Felice has a great way of pacing his stories and building excitement in his Sporty Kids books. The Year Twos listened with baited breath waiting to see if Luca would defeat Vinny Ping the Handball King in their handball challenge. They were also reminded of the importance of being a good sport when you are both a winner and a loser.
Each Year Two class then rated Felice’s Handball book out of five and we tweeted him our photos…
Thank you for our Sporty Kids books Felice and for making reading fun!
Now we need to decide on a fun challenge for students who would like to win one of Felice’s bookmarks. If you have an idea please write it in the comments section…
On Friday morning, Twitter serendipitously connected us with three of our favourite Australian authors…
Before school during BRB time, two students brought me two books to ask if Jacqueline Arena was Felice Arena’s sister? “What a great question!’ I replied. “Why don’t we send a tweet to Felice Arenaand ask him?” I took a photo and added our question to a tweet. By the time they had unpacked their bags in their classroom, two very impressed girls had their answer from Felice!
Two more students excitedly showed me they were both reading the first book in the Clementine Rose series by Jacqueline Harvey. The girls were excited to have their photo taken to tweet to Jacqueline. Jacqueline’s reply showed she was thrilled to see she has two new readers who have discovered her popular Clementine Rose books and the girls were even more thrilled to hear back from the author of their book!
The final author tweet was a rather mysterious one that Adrian Beck sent me with a photo of our school and some copies of his latest book written for the Stuff Happens series in the foreground. All will be revealed about Adrian’s surprise in the next blog post…
These are three small examples of the power of Twitter as an authentic way of connecting readers, authors (and teacher librarians).
A BIG thank you to Felice, Jacqueline and Adrian for using Twitter to connect with their readers in such a positive way!
As a teacher librarian, Twitter is an invaluable way to keep up to date with all things ‘books’, but for me the real value and joy is being able to connect with authors and in turn connect our students too. Connecting through Twitter with the four fabulous authors in this blog post has enriched both our reading and library program in ways I had never imagined…
I was excited to read on Twitter that The Little Bookroomin Carlton was hosting an Author Afternoon Teaon March 3rd and quickly sent my RSVP so I would have an opportunity to catch up withJacqueline Harvey, Adrian Beck, Felice Arena and Tristan Bancks together in the one place.
It was a treat to be at The Little Bookroom to hear these fabulous authors talk about their books, answer questions and chat about bookish things…
When four authors get together you can’t miss the opportunity to take…
an Author Selfie…
Did you know…
Here is some of the latest news about each of the authors from the Author Afternoon Tea and a reminder of the ways we have been lucky to connect with them.
Jacqueline Harveyhas two new books out for her popular Alice Miranda and Clementine Rose series. Click on the book covers to read some of each story…
Jacqueline has recorded the first five Alice Miranda books as audio books for Audible. Now Jacqueline can read to you! (Check with your parents if you want to subscribe)
Who would have thought Jacqueline would have written so many books including two successful book series since she visited our libraryon herbook tour for her first Alice Miranda book in March 2012!
We knowAdrian Beck is co-author of the Kick it to Nick series with Shane Crawford, but Adrian is also about to launch a new book in May for the Stuff Happens series and his character Dale also shares his red coloured hair! We can’t wait for this book!
Adrian is now the executive producer of Kids WB and it’s great to see lots of children’s authors talking about their books on the show. (Stay tuned because Jacqueline and Tristan will be on the show in the next few weeks).
We had lots of fun with Adrian last year when he came up with the brilliant idea of theYeo-low Medal reading competitionfor our school and wore his ‘best’ suit to present theYeo-Low Medalto our winners. We’re going to read for the Yeo-Low Medal again this year Adrian!
Felice Arena and his Sporty Kids series have been a big hit at our school. The Year Ones had fun tweetingabout the books with Felice last year as we read them and Felice recently made a surprise visit to see these students this year. We are looking forward to his Handball and Basketball books coming out very soon! Felice told us he has recently finished writing an historical fiction novel for older readers that will be coming out in February 2017.
Last year our school was incredibly lucky to have authors Felice Arena, Adrian Beck and Michael Wagner perform theirKicking Goals for Readers AFL footy show for us. It was such a fun way to celebrate books and footy!
Tristan Bancksis the author of the very funny My Life series that lots of our students enjoy reading. His newest book My Life and Other Exploding Chickens is out now and I laughed out loud reading about the Ninja Librarians (I might have sorted out my Book Week costume early this year)!
Tristan loves having his readers contribute to his stories and if you want to add an idea for his next story about nits (yes nits!!) for his next book you can do so HERE.
I was lucky to meet Tristan and see his presentation at the 2015 Children’s Book Festival . Last yearAt their Sleepover, the Year Fours squirmed a lot while listening to ‘Scab’ from Tristan’s book My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up that I read for their Bedtime Story in the LRC.
Felice Arenais a popular author in our library! Felice has a range of fans across the grades for his series books including Specky Magee, Farticus Maximus, Stick Dudes and Andy Roid. You can find Felice’s website HERE.
Felice has just released a new series called Sporty Kids that is perfect for early readers. The first sports are Swimming and Footy with more sports to follow. The books are a perfect length with short chapters and fun illustrations by Tom Jellett.
Miss Y thought the Year Ones would really enjoy the Sporty Kids books and she wasn’t wrong! We read the Swimming book and had lots of fun talking about belly- whackers (and demonstrating them!). Lots of students have had swimming lessons and knew the activities that Emma and her friends were doing. They liked that some of the characters shared names with children in their classes. They loved the way Emma used her imagination to help her with her swimming and had lots of fun guessing which sea creatures she would pretend to be and were very accurate with their guesses! Some classes even cheered Emma on as she tried her last dive.
A big part of the fun was when Miss Y took photos of each class pretending to be one of the sea creatures and tweeted the photo and our comment to Felice. It was so exciting to have Felice send a tweet back to each class!
You can read them here…
Tweeting with Felice was a fabulous way to connect the students directly and immediately with the author of the book they were reading and to “take the book off the page”! They were thrilled to read Felice’s replies. It was tricky fitting everything into our 45 minute lesson (and Miss Y had a few typos while trying to speed type on her phone) but it was well worth the effort.
Thank you Felice, for helping Miss Y make reading fun in our LRC. We can’t wait to read your Sporty Kids Footy book next…
