I was lucky to be part of Australia Book Week at two primary schools in Sydney this year – Waverley Public School and Maroubra Bay Public School.
The day I visited Waverley they were dressed up as characters from their favourite children’s books. It was very funny to be looking out at an audience made up of Cat in the Hat, Elsa, Snow White, Fantastic Mr Fox, Spiderman and the Gruffalo. Asking a question when you’re wearing a mask is not easy particularly for the person trying to understand the question – “I’m sorry Mr Fox please can you repeat that.”

Due to technical issues (there’s always something), the lovely librarian, Katey, at Waverley had to spend most of my presentation in the cupboard clicking through my slides when she heard me shout “next”, as the slide show wouldn’t work on the projector. I’m always so grateful to the fantastic teachers and librarians at schools! At Maroubra Bay the interactive-white-board decided to be very un-interactive and every time I tried to draw anything it put the line somewhere completely different on the page! A wonderful teacher then stepped up and held a piece of paper up on the wall for me to draw on – you can pull off pretty much anything with a little help and some improvisation.
One little boy at Maroubra bay asked me if I was famous! We decided that probably neither of us were but that we might be one day.

I had the privilege at Waverley of finding out how to sign POWEs as there was a sign language interpreter signing my presentation for a hearing-impaired little girl in the audience.

It always makes me feel amazing when a room of 70 kids are all silent and are all looking at me or the pictures of my book on the screen. It feels like a miracle to be able to hold their attention like that.


Find out what the schools are saying about my visits.
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