When I posted about the Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) Wordplay sessions in my Activities For August post, Rosemary from MWF left a comment letting me know that you could purchase individual sessions to the school sessions and didn’t have to be part of a school group. At $6 a session I thought these to be amazing value and I booked Thinker into three sessions.
I asked Thinker if we would write about his time at the sessions and he has kindly obliged. Here is his unedited account (I did do the formatting and linking for the blog) of his day at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival Schools Sessions:
Being gangster @ M.W.F
Hello and thank you Planning Queen (usually). I am going to tell you a little story that happened last full moon. Once upon a time a boy named _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ who was filled with awesomeness and he went to the Melbourne Writers Festival. He went on the train because he wanted the world to be free from global warming and greenhouse gases. He got off the train at Flinder’s street station and went to Fed Square. He went straight to acmi and cut in front of all the schools. 🙂 (Woot). He took the 23rd best seat in the house (the 5th row in the middle). His mum waited outside and worked on her MacBook.
In the cinema he was sitting next to this middle-age lady who was asking him lots of different questions. Morris Gleitzman started talking about his new book (Grace). When he finished talking about Grace he started talking about his other books and about the holocaust. He wrote these books (Once and Then) because he had a grandfather who was a Jew. When the Nazis invaded Poland everyone in his grandfather’s family apart from his grandfather and Morris’ dad died. They survived by climbing out of hole in the roof.
After this talk the boy who was awesome had morning tea. Then he went to another talk from author who also was a dinosaur finder (John Long). The start wasn’t that interesting, the middle and the end were much better. He writes books for kids and adults. When he finished his talk the boy went out and got a slurpee (THAT WAS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER BECAUSE HIS MUM HAD NEVER BOUGHT THE BOY A SLURPEE B4).
After that he went to a talk by another author (Richard Newsome). It was really interesting and he loved it. The boy even got his signature. The author talked about one important power you have as an author, you have the power to kill anyone in the story. At the end of this talk the boy went home on the train. The boy hopes that his school will go next year. He also wishes the author Robert Muchamore will be there next year. You can follow him on twitter.
When he got home from the festival he and his dad went to the library and got Maximum Security ( A gangster book by Robert Muchamore) and put a reserve on for The Billionaire’s Curse by Richard Newsome, because the library didn’t have it yet.