A Fabulous Day at SUIS Hongqiao!
October 31, 2016 at 6:00 pm | Posted in Children's Chinese Zodiac Books, Chinese Calendar Tales, Monkey story, Shanghai schools, workshops, Writing competitions for kids | 2 CommentsTags: Chinese history, Halloween, SUIS Hongqiao
My Shanghai schools tour kicked off to a wonderful start today at Shanghai United International School in Hongqiao with the fabulous Grade 4 students! After a fun story reading, where I introduced the kids to The Tale of Ming Kee Monkey and the fascinating 7th century Chinese history behind it (not to mention The Legend of the Monkey King written 9 centuries later!), we had two writing workshops about story planning, full of handy hints about How to Write a Riveting Story! I was very happy to hear that loads of SUIS kids intend to enter my Horribly Hilarious Halloween Story Competition – I can hardly wait to read their stories! Huge thanks to the lovely Shelly Nasseri, Head of English, for being such a warm and welcoming host.
Yippee! I’m flying up to Shanghai tomorrow!
October 29, 2016 at 9:24 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
I’m as excited as a squawking parakeet with a purple tail!! Tomorrow I fly up to Shanghai to visit 7 fabulous schools with Ming Kee Monkey and all her Chinese Calendar Tales cousins! We’re going to have a blast! Make sure you visit my blog every day to keep up with all the photos and fun!
Just 4 weeks to go in my Hilarious Halloween writing competition!
October 27, 2016 at 3:01 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentMwa ha ha!
With Halloween just around the corner, I expect that you’re all getting your costumes ready for a fun evening of Trick or Treat! But you’d better be taking notes…and getting ideas 🙂 …because there are only 4 weeks left to enter my Hilarious Halloween Story Writing Competition! See my Clever Competitions page (above) for all the details!!
A fabulous morning with the Grade 3s at PLK CKY School!
October 24, 2016 at 2:19 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Huge thanks to the lovely Joli Moore at PLK CKY School for hosting me again today! It was great to meet the fabulous P3s, and we had a lot of fun learning How to Write a Riveting Story in 3 fabulous workshop sessions! I hope to see some great entries in my Hilarious Halloween story writing competition on my Clever Competitions page above, using your Story Planning Sheets as a handy tool!
It’s time for a Horribly Hilarious Halloween Story Competition!
October 11, 2016 at 12:39 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
It’s that time of the year again, when ghouls, ghosts and goblins are grabbing their galoshes, witches and warlocks are wondering where they put their broomsticks, and mums and dads are saving all their pennies for their kids’ upcoming dentist appointments! Yes, Halloween is around the corner, and it’s time for another international Halloween Story competition! Only this time, while you’re scaring me silly, I also want you to make me LAUGH! Go to my Clever Competitions page above right away for all the details and conditions! The deadline is FRIDAY 25TH NOVEMBER, so you’d better get your pencils and wits sharpened and GET WRITING!
Pssst…if you want some hints on how to write a prize-winning story, click on my new Story Writing Hints on the menu above!
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
September 16, 2016 at 10:16 am | Posted in Books about Chinese Zodiac, Children's Chinese Zodiac Books, Chinese Calendar Tales, Chinese festivals, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: Mid-Autumn Festival, Moon cakes, Moon Festival, The Legend of Chang'e, The Legend of the Rabbit in the Moon, The Tale of Rhonda Rabbit
A very happy Mid-Autumn Festival to you! I hope that you’re all enjoying the holidays today in Hong Kong. The most famous features of the Festival are moon cakes and lanterns…and here is a beautiful lantern photographed by my beautiful daughter Beatrice – thank you Bea! The Mid-Autumn Festival is also called – you guessed it – the Moon Festival, and sometimes the Mooncake Festival or the Lantern Festival! There are some lovely Chinese folk stories associated with the Moon Festival, including the Legend of the Moon Goddess, Chang’e, and the Legend of the Rabbit in the Moon. If you want to read more, you can click here: http://www.moonfestival.org/the-legend-of-chang-e.html, or, better yet, read my Chinese Calendar Tale, The Tale of Rhonda Rabbit! You can even buy it here: http://www.auspicioustimes.com/product/the-tale-of-rhonda-rabbit/!
A fabulous evening with Room to Read at Bookazine!
September 9, 2016 at 8:45 am | Posted in Bookshop event, children's literacy, Room to Read | Leave a commentTags: Bookazine Princes Building, BuyABookGiveABook
I had a wonderful time at the Hong Kong launch of Room To Read’s BuyABookGiveABook campaign last night at Bookazine in Princes Building! For the rest of September, when you buy any of 50 fabulous titles at one of Bookazines stores at Princes Building, Exchange Square, Lyndhurst Terrace, Repulse Bay or the Shui On Centre, a local language book for a child in an underdeveloped country will be funded by Bookazine! These books include titles by Hong Kong’s Room To Read Writer Ambassadors Bhakti Mhatur, Nury Vittachi and myself 🙂 , Kids Fest books, and books by Room To Read founder John Woods (see top right!). All books included in the campaign have a fun sticker attached to help you find them.
John Woods gave an inspiring talk about the fabulous work Room To Read are doing, reaching literacy targets ahead of time in their quest to end illiteracy for all children, everywhere. Read more about Room To Read’s amazing work building libraries and schools, and publishing local language books, for kids in underdeveloped countries (and find out how you can get involved) here: http://www.roomtoread.org/
If you’d like to support the BuyABookGiveABook campaign, just pop along to one of the above Bookazine stores this September! You can update your collection of Sarah Brennan books at the same time 🙂 !
The Results are out in my Sunny Summer Poem Competition!
September 7, 2016 at 2:52 pm | Posted in children's literacy, Writing competitions for kids | Leave a commentTags: Clever Competition, Sunny Summer Poem Competition
Phew! I’ve just finished the judging of my Sunny Summer Poetry Competition! It was tremendous fun, but exhausting… I think I need a good long drink of lemonade with ice!
There were a total of 79 fabulous entries this time, from 21 schools in 8 cities around the world: Calcutta, Chicago, Hong Kong, Perth, Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney! A big thank you to everyone who entered for your very hard work and wonderful creations!
Congratulations to the Top Ten entrants in each Category, whose winning poems have just been posted on my Clever Competitions page above!
Special congratulations to Madeline Painter of Dryden School in Chicago who won the Years One to Three Category, and to Aria Fafat of UWCSEA Dover in Singapore, winner of the Years Four to Six Category. Their poems are outstanding.
So if you want to soak up the last of the summer sun while reading some fabulous poetry, go to the Clever Competitions page right away to enjoy all the winning entries!
A fun event at Hong Kong Maritime Museum!
September 4, 2016 at 9:30 pm | Posted in Bookshop event, Chinese Calendar Tales, Chinese Zodiac, Story Readings | Leave a commentTags: Hong Kong Maritime Museum, The Tale of Chester Choi, The Tale of Rodney Ram
This afternoon I had the huge pleasure of meeting some kids, mums and dads and students from Yew Chung College at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum! There were two story readings (The Tale of Chester Choi and The Tale of Rodney Ram), with book signings after and a chance to meet the audience! Many thanks to Annette Lo and Kitty But from the Museum for hosting a great afternoon!
Wow! Meet a Hong Kong teenage author with more than 6 million readers!!
September 1, 2016 at 5:55 pm | Posted in Being an Author | Leave a commentTags: children's literacy, Expat Parent magazine
I was just browsing a fabulous Hong Kong parenting magazine called Expat Parent today, when I came across this article, about 14 year old who has clocked up more than 6 million readers with her online book Falling Too Far! She talks about how she became a writer, and how she organizes her week to fit her writing in with school work and all the usual life of a teenager in Hong Kong. Now there’s inspiration for other young writers! Here’s the link: http://expat-parent.com/2016/08/11/bookworm/ . Have a read and see what you think!
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