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Showing posts from August, 2012

Book Week Wrap Up

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Another couple of weeks of brutalising the vocal chords, getting lost on school grounds, and forcing the breakfast routine at home to hurry along to ensure I make it on time to the next gig are drawing to a close. Ask any (children's) author or illustrator what compels them to make so many back to back engagements during various literacy promoting weeks like CBCA's Book Week and the National Literacy and Numeracy Week and you'll probably get a different answer every time. Their agent asked them to. Book Week is THE time to make school visits count. It's a nice change to presenting at Festivals and Industry Seminars all the time. It's a golden opportunity to reach out and connect with your actual target audience - The Kids. It pays well - I actually made enough to cover the cost of a new magenta ink cartridge, once you subtract the chemist bills for all the medications needed to retain my voice. They like the sound of their own voice (if they don't lose

Champions Read ~ And look at the Pictures

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Have you read a book today? For yourself, or even better with someone else. If that someone else is a child, then Bravo. You're a Champion and like the motto for this year's CBCA Book Week, Champions Read. However in the sometime chaotic race to excel these days, the simple things in life are often given scant attention in favour of achieving the BIG GOAL. I'm speaking of the shelves of picture books that may have been jettisoned now that your child or grandchild has moved out of the first grades of their education and are busy piling the seas of literacy. Throw out a life buoy and reel them back in I say. The importance of picture books can not be ever underestimated, in my estimation and that's not just because I love to write them and read them still. Some months ago I attended a master class by respected children' author illustrator Angela Sunde . Apart from some very illuminating insights on the making of picture books, Angela highlighted an equal

Resounding Success

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As a debut emerging author, I take the utmost pleasure in regularly soaking up as much information as I possibly can. Attending literary events such as the Gold Coast Literati Festival , not only allows me to occupy the same room as my peers and other revered authors and illustrators, along with prospective readers but also puts me in prime position for collecting new insights and clarifying old wisdoms. Resonance was one such session I recently sat in on during which fantasy writer Rowena Cory Daniells, discussed what resonance was, what it meant for the writer and to the reader and how it was acquired. She explained how Resonance was the unique feeling the reader took away with them when they finished reading a book. For the Writer, it was that special affinity you try to instill in your writing, the mindset you need to be in in order to write true to your story. Resonance comes in the most part from past experience. For others on the panel, Steve Irwin (author of The D