Young writers and young readers

Lesley-Anne and I had a pretty full February and March. Apart from our new project together (which I will give details about in due course), we also conducted several school talks and a workshop.

The workshop in question was for the All In! Young Writers Festival, entitled "Crafting Creative Stories for Young Readers".

Because the workshop was for an older age group than our usual audience and on a slightly different topic, we had to come up with new materials.

Our participants ranged from teenagers to adults - very diverse.

 

I'm always slightly apprehensive when we have a new programme as I'm not sure how the audience will respond to it but as it turned out, I needed have worried. They participants were engaged and looked like they enjoyed themselves tremendously. In one of the games, three friends were so charged up they actually moved around, acting out their parts.

We interacted with the participants in turn, and were pretty impressed by some of the very original ideas that emerged. One girl came up with a character called Baby Breath, who was cute and sweet but had difficulties breathing around babies. How fun is that?

Photo by All In!

Here they are busy writing their children's stories. Maybe a future award-winning one? Who knows!

Photo by All In!

After the event, we were told by the organisers that we received a 4.6 overall rating (out of a maximum of 5) for our workshop. How encouraging! We're very pleased 😃

We conducted two other talks at international schools in February. One was at ISS International to Grades 4s and 5s:

Another school talk was at Chatsworth East to Year 3-5s:

We were also stoked to hear that one of the Chatsworth East is using Secrets of Singapore as a guide to Singapore history in one of their Year 3 units. As writers, news like that truly make our day. Thank you, Chatsworth East, for that vote of confidence!