The Snail ate the mail visits AIS

For an aspiring children’s writer it doesn’t get much better than last Friday.  I was honoured to be invited by the Australian International School, Balikpapan as a guest author for Book Week.  Prior to facilitating workshops across pre-school – year 10, I watched the Book Week character parade.  I was humbled that my son had chosen to go as the snail out of my book.  As a parent I can’t think of any greater aspiration than having your child be proud of you.

For the book reading/workshops the age of the students ranged from 3 – 15 years.  While the book is predominantly targeted towards 4-7 year olds, all of these children were extremely receptive to the book.  I had the original mock-up that Paul had done and without exception all were keen to enjoy the tactile nature of the book and participate in the alliteration.  Actually the teachers appeared as enrapt as the children.

For the session with the secondary students I was joined by Wina Miranda (http://winamiranda.com/)  who has had a number of journal articles published.  We were able to offer different perspectives on being published and the challenges that we had and do face.

Whilst it was lovely to have the children clamber over each other to get even closer and attempt to outdo each other in solving the mystery.  For me the true indication of their enjoyment was when individuals came to me later to share their stories and tell me they couldn’t wait to get their own copy of The Snail ate the mail.