Watch our fab session at the HK Young Readers Festival today!

June 10, 2020 at 2:48 pm | Posted in Bookazine Princes Building, Chinese Calendar Tales, Events, Harry Harrison, Hong Kong events, Hong Kong Young Readers Festival 2020, Shatin Junior School, Video, Virtual visits, Zoom visits | Leave a comment
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If you just missed Harry Harrison and my fabulous video and Q and A session with the kids of Shatin Junior School Grade 3 today, you can listen here! It was so much fun! You can find out all about why and how we created the Chinese Calendar Tales, from first idea to final Boxed Set! You can even watch Harry as he draws from preliminary sketch to final painting! Thanks to Catherine Platt, director of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, for this fantastic event! And to lovely moderator Julia Kuehn; James Ryan, cub reporter, for his fabulous questions on our video; Annabel Cohen (my daughter!) for the fantastic filming and editing; Bookazine for their brilliant offer of 15% off all the Chinese Calendar Tales this June; Hugh Beames and Karen Middleton of Shatin Junior School; and Joseph, our tech advisor and supporter!!

Don’t miss a fun session with Harry Harrison and me at the Hong Kong Young Readers’ Festival next week!

June 5, 2020 at 4:24 pm | Posted in Being a publisher, Hong Kong Young Readers Festival 2020, Literary Festivals, Shatin Junior School, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
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I’m so excited to be a part of the Hong Kong Virtual Young Readers Festival 2020! I’m appearing alongside British author and performer Mark Llewelyn Evans, who uses music and storytelling to engage kids with the story of opera, Australian writer and bush worker Matt Zurbo, who inspires kids to create their own stories by finding humour and inspiration in every day events, and fellow Hong Kong writer Anna Tso! The Festival is accessible to all children in Hong Kong, live this and next week, and after that you can view the sessions on the HKYRF website at any time!

My live session with Harry Harrison takes place next Wednesday, and today we had a fun rehearsal with the kids of Shatin Junior School for an audience! They watched our very funny, informative video session, made by my daughter Annabel Cohen, in which we tell how The Chinese Calendar Tales came about, and how to publish a picture book, with some fantastic footage of Harry drawing one of our characters from The Tale of Chester Choi, from initial sketch to final painting! Make sure you visit the HKYRF site next week to see the video and Q and A session yourself!

Visit to Shatin Junior by Zoom!

March 2, 2020 at 11:06 am | Posted in Chinese New Year, Hong Kong Schools, School visits, Shatin Junior School, Video, Year of the Rat, Zoom visits | Leave a comment
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I just visited the kids and teachers Shatin Junior School by Zoom, to do a fun live story reading of The Tale of Run Run Rat! We had over 120 kids logging in! Thanks so much to teachers Trudy McMillin and James Haworth for organising and hosting this fun online event! Below you can see a couple of fun video clips, and above, some photos. You can even see my little dog Mozart in one of them, enjoying the story!

A Funny and Fabulous Visit to Shatin Junior School!

February 4, 2019 at 2:35 pm | Posted in Hong Kong Schools, Shatin Junior School | Leave a comment
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the minister leading the pig with her bag_lo res

Illustration credit: Harry Harrison. From The Tale of Ping Pong Pig.

My second school visit last week, on Wednesday, was to my dear friends at Shatin Junior School, just around the corner from my office in Fo Tan! In four very noisy and animated sessions all the kids from P1 to P6 made friends with Ping Pong Pig, and echoes of “Run Pig! Run!” could be heard in the playground in all the breaks! Above, you can see Ping Pong heading off to the Forbidden City in the evil clutches of the Minister of Most Important Things! Run Pig! Run! And below, me and my toy pig Paavo (cousin of Ping Pong Pig) with a fabulous bunch of Year 6 Pig lovers!

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Two fun-filled days at Shatin Junior School!

March 2, 2018 at 11:03 am | Posted in Hong Kong Schools, Shatin Junior School, workshops | Leave a comment
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Thank you to my dear friends at Shatin Junior School for two fabulous days on Wednesday and Thursday as part of their Book Week celebrations! You can see three fab teachers above, getting into bossy, huggy trouble!! Desmond Dog and I met the whole of primary school in two BIG story reading sessions, then I worked with all the Grade 4s in 5 fab How to Write a Riveting Story sessions! I hope to see LOTS of great entries in my Dashing Dog Story Competition – details here! And an extra big thank you to my wonderful host, and friend, Karen Hubbard! More photos to come!

A funny and fabulous photo to share!

March 2, 2017 at 12:09 pm | Posted in children's literacy, Shatin Junior School | Leave a comment
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karen-hubbard-elvis-and-meThank you Karen Hubbard, Lead Teacher of Curriculum at Shatin Junior School, and my wonderful host and friend, for this fabulous photo taken during Book Week this week! I LOVE Karen’s costume, and note how it matches the colours on the cover of my latest Chinese Calendar Tale, The Tale of Rickshaw Rooster, perfectly! Not to mention Elvis the Australian Rooster (a.k.a. an Emu with two blue tail feathers) who is sitting on her shoulder! And what is he saying? Of course! It’s Cock-a-doodle-GLOMP!

Three fabulous days at Shatin Junior School!

March 1, 2017 at 6:04 pm | Posted in Chinese New Year, School visits, Shatin Junior School | 2 Comments
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A huge thank you to Karen Hubbard and all the lovely staff and students at Shatin Junior School, for hosting me at their Book Week this week! I spent three full, funny and fabulous days with the kids doing a host of story readings and workshops! Everyone from Year One to Year Six met my latest character in The Chinese Calendar Tales – that cocky but loveable Rickshaw Rooster- in a fun story reading full of fascinating historical facts and cockadoodledoos! Then I spent two inspiring days with the Year 5s (who learned How to Become A Great Writer) and the Year 4s (who learned How to Write a Riveting Story)! Five things to remember, for ALL you kids who want to write fabulous stories:

  1. Free up your leisure time!
  2. Radically reduce the time you spend on digital games and devices!
  3. Radically increase the time you spend reading great books!
  4. Plan your stories before you write them!
  5. Enter my latest Clever Competition right away!

And you’ll be well on the way to becoming truly GREAT writers!

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