Last year my eldest son went to the Melbourne Writers Festival Schools Program for the first time. He had a great time (you can read his review from last year here) and asked to go again this year. So we did! As his school didn’t participate again this year, he had the day off and I took him into Fed Square to attend our booked sessions. A big thumbs up to Fed Square and their free wifi. While he had a fab time listening to great authors, I worked on my trusty Macbook. Thanks to Thinker for taking the time to write a review of his time at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
***
At this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival Schools Program I got to listen to two of my favourite authors which was really cool. On Monday 30th August I went to Fed Square to go to three sessions. The first session was at BMW Edge starring Andy Griffiths who spoke about his new book, The Very Bad Book the sequel to The Bad Book. He talked about how he liked putting bad jokes into his books like “Why did the boy fail his maths test? Because his mother threw a fridge at him.” I liked that his jokes were really random.
The next author I saw was Gabrielle Lord, the writer of Conspiracy 365 series. (Note from PQ – this is Thinkers review of Conspiracy 365 January) She talked about the research she did for the books, like going to the police and asking different questions to understand crime for her books. Lord has won awards for her books and I think may have a world exclusive here. Conspiracy 365 will be turned into a movie! After the session was finished talking I went and bought the latest three Conspiracy books (June, July, August). (Note from PQ – he had finished them within two days!!)
The next authors I went to see were Andy Griffiths and Ursula Dubosarsky . They talked about the English language. Ursula talked about her book called The Word Spy and her latest book The Terrible Plop that has been shortlisted for the Children’s Book Awards. They talked about what they did before being writers and Andy said that he was a lyricist for a high school band called Unborn Babies.
The Melbourne Writers Festival was great and I wish I could have seen more authors. These are the reasons why I think kids should go to the festival:
- You learn about different writing styles.
- You learn about what it takes to be an author.
- You learn more about what the authors are like in person.
From PQ – do your kids attend the festival with their school or like me have you taken your child/ren along? Is so we would love to hear about your time there.
{ 2 comments }
I took my 9yo son, 8yo nephew & 6yo daughter ( last min. too sick to go to school!) to the writer’s festival and was amazed at the set up at Fed Square.The children loved it and even my 6yo got to ask Andy Griffiths a question. The authors presented a wealth of information to the children and I like you will be petitioning our school to attend next year.
I’ve never taken my kids to a writer’s festival – I think mostly because I live in a relatively (for USA) small city and there aren’t really any – you’d need to travel to DC. Although I think Melbourne is a bit bigger (4 mill) in any case you are blessed with all that culture around you. My kids are more interested in dance festivals or cultural festivals like Greek Festival, Chinese Festival etc with lots of visuals although as they grow older they are more into books.
Comments on this entry are closed.