A fabulous time at the AISHK Fair!
November 14, 2018 at 4:17 pm | Posted in AISHK, Australian schools, Christmas Fairs | Leave a commentTags: Storm Whale, The Chinese Calendar Tales
On Saturday I felt right at home with the Aussie kids, parents and teachers at the fantastic Australian International School Fair at Kowloon Tong! I sold lots of books, met lots of fans, young and old, and all in all had a great time!
Hello Brisbane!!
October 24, 2018 at 6:27 pm | Posted in Australian schools, Awards, Brisbane schools, Poetry Workshops for kids | Leave a commentTags: Churchie, Introduction to Poetry Workshop, Novella Distribution, Queensland Literary Awards 2018, St Margaret's Anglican Girls' School, Storm Whale, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Chester Choi
Photo credit https://blog.queensland.com/2017/10/26/jacarandas-south-east-queensland/
I’ve been in Brisbane this week for a wonderful 5 days to attend the awards ceremony for the Queensland Literary Awards, to visit some of my favourite Brisbane schools, and to visit my family! It’s jacaranda time in Brisbane, when the beautiful blue blooms on the jacaranda trees mean that students should be studying hard for their end-of-year exams!
On Tuesday morning, I visited my old friends at Churchie (Anglican Church Grammar School) in East Brisbane, where the fabulous Grade 3 boys identified haikus, unscrambled limericks and did some rapid rhyming exercises in my Introduction to Poetry Workshop! Many thanks to lovely primary teacher librarian Alison Findlay for expertly hosting me! We had a lot of fun!
On Tuesday evening, my lovely daughter Bea, my brother and sister-in-law accompanied me to the Awards Ceremony for the Queensland Literary Awards 2018! You’ll remember that Storm Whale, my beautiful book with artist Jane Tanner and published last year by Allen & Unwin, was one of the 5 children’s books short-listed for the Griffith University Children’s Book Award. Here it is, displayed at left on the screen above! The Elephant by Peter Carnavas won the award in our section. It was such an exciting event, and I got to meet some of my amazing fellow authors and judges afterwards! Below you’ll see Storm Whale sitting very happily on the sales table with other fabulous short-listed titles!
Today I dropped into two great Brisbane schools to say hello and to introduce them to my Chinese Calendar Tales. Below you’ll see me with some cuties at St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School, sitting astride their famous dragon mascot with a copy of The Tale of Chester Choi! See you all next year girls! Many thanks to their lovely primary principal Angela Drysdale and librarian Donna Jackson for the warm welcome!
Finally, I met the fab team at my new Australian distributors, Novella Distribution in Capalaba! Below, the lovely Rochelle Manners is standing with their wombat mascot, and a very special small wombat which appears to have learned how to climb trees! Thanks girls for a great meeting, and for my new baby wombat, which I’ve christened The Barefoot ‘Bat!
Beware!! Just 11 days left in my Perfect Pet Poem Competition for Primary School kids!
October 17, 2018 at 3:14 pm | Posted in Clever Competitions, Poetry competitions for children, Writing competitions for kids | Leave a commentTags: Ching Shih, Perfect Pet Poem Competition, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Desmond Dog
Ching Shih, the real-life pirate queen in my story The Tale of Desmond Dog, would like to warn you that you have just 11 days left to enter your Perfect Pet Poem in my latest Clever Competition! The deadline is 28 October – and you can enter from anywhere in the world! But beware! If you miss the deadline, Ching Shih might just chop your ears off!! Read all the details of the competition here!
A wonderful visit to UISG in Guangzhou!
October 13, 2018 at 5:04 pm | Posted in Guangzhou schools, Utahloy International School of Guangzhou, workshops | Leave a commentTags: Books about China for kids, Books about Chinese Zodiac, How to Publish a Picture Book, The Chinese Calendar Tales
This week I made the train journey up to Guangzhou to visit the beautiful Utahloy International School of Guangzhou! (Utaloy is the rough pronunciation of Great Virtue in Chinese, I was told). There I was hosted by the lovely Head Librarian Chrissy Erwin (above), and we started the day with a latte on the balcony overlooking a river beside a forest, in the prettiest setting I have EVER seen for a school, in China or anywhere! It also had wonderful open air playing space for the kids, including a fabulous Dr Seuss tree for the little ones, and a pirate ship for the older kids! Here it is, crammed with P3 and P4 pirates and me!
Thanks Chrissy, and Kelly Phillips, her librarian colleague, for hosting me for a very special day of story readings from the Chinese Calendar Tales with all the primary school students, as well as the Grade 7 and Grade 8 students who learned How to Publish a Picture Book from Brilliant Idea to Final Product.
Above left, you can see me with Kelly Phillips, Chrissy Erwin, and the lovely new Primary Principal Michelle Jones to her right. On the right, you can see me with the fabulous library assistants team Betty Zheng, Haiqing Sun and Judy Li and “our” Chinese Zodiac animals! Below left, I am interviewed by the staff of the high school newspaper The Howl, while below right, you can see the wonderful Dr Seuss tree playground for the younger students.
And finally, just a couple of fun photos with the P3s – we had great fun with a Tale of Desmond Dog story reading and swearing the solemn oath to look at my website!
A memorable visit to QSI Zhuhai!
September 29, 2018 at 11:00 am | Posted in QSI Zhuhai, Story Readings, workshops, Zhuhai schools | Leave a commentTags: Chinese history, Chinese Zodiac, How to Become a Great Writer, How to Create Bookworms in the Digital Age, How to Publish a Picture Book, Introduction to Poetry Workshop, Nailing the Narrative Curve, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Desmond Dog, The Tale of Pin Yin Panda
Thank you so much to fabulous primary school teacher Heather Domenico, for hosting me for two very busy days at QSI in Zhuhai on Wednesday and Thursday this last week! We had sessions for absolutely everyone from ages 2 to 18, as well as an after-school talk to the mums and dads!
The littlest ones met my crew of stuffed toys in a funny re-enactment of Lord Buddha’s Race – and proved they were extremely good at counting up to 12!
The 5 to 6 year olds proved they were old hands at the Chinese Zodiac when I read them The Tale of Pin Yin Panda while the 7 to 8 year olds became fearsome pirates as they heard The Tale of Desmond Dog!
The 9 to 11 year olds learned all about How to Publish A Picture Book from Brilliant Idea to Final Product and even got a sneek peak at my final Chinese Calendar Tale for the Year of the Pig, which is currently in production!
After school on Wednesday, I talked to a lovely group of parents about How to Create Bookworms in the Digital Age. Here are just a few of them, with their kids!
And finally, the 12 to 18 year olds and I spent almost the whole of Thursday together, in three different workshops: How to Become a Good Writer, An Introduction to Poetry and, finally, Nailing the Narrative Curve, where we had tremendous fun writing a story plan for the tragic story of three teenagers caught in a love triangle…in a paradise entered through a school locker portal!
And in between I met some fabulous kids, parents and teachers when I signed the books they bought from my wonderful distributor, Aaron Tearne at Obido Educational Services! If anyone missed out on buying a book, you can still do so, with some great discounts for multiple purchases here!
More photos to come!
There’s Monkey Business afoot at AISHK Book Week!
August 31, 2018 at 3:12 pm | Posted in AISHK, Book Week, Hong Kong Schools | Leave a commentTags: Australian Book Week 2018, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Ming Kee Monkey
Oh dear! That mischievous Ming Kee Monkey is on the loose at Book Week at Australian International School Hong Kong today! Thanks so much to Jean, who sent me this fabulous photo of her gorgeous daughter Maddie, all dressed up and ready to have fun as the main character in one of my and Harry Harrison’s Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Ming Kee Monkey! Doesn’t she look fantastic?
A Book Week visit at MLC in Melbourne!
August 28, 2018 at 7:43 pm | Posted in Australian schools, Melbourne schools, Methodist Ladies College, Story Readings, workshops | Leave a commentTags: Australian Book Week 2018, Books about Chinese history for kids, Books about Chinese Zodiac, Chinese geography, Chinese history, Ching Shih, Qin Shi Huangdi, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Desmond Dog
![20180816_093331[1]](https://i0.wp.com/sarahbrennanblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/20180816_0933311.jpg?w=271&h=132&ssl=1 "20180816_093331[1]")
The subject of this year’s Book Week in Australia was Find Your Treasure, and what better book to introduce to the fabulous girls of Melbourne Ladies College on 16th and 17th August than my latest Chinese Calendar Tale, The Tale of Desmond Dog, a story of pirates, treasure and an infamous Pirate Queen! On the 16th, all the girls from Grade 4 to Grade 6 joined the crew for a story reading, followed by a hearty lunch with the Book Bugs (top photo) who heard some Top Secrets about my next (and final) Chinese Calendar Tale for next year’s Year of the Pig! In the afternoon I was delighted to meet wonderful Grade 3 student Hannah Thompson, the winner of the Grade 1 to 3 Category in my Dashing Dog Story Competition earlier this year (middle photo above), followed by a delightful Grade 1 student who is already writing lots of stories in her spare time (bottom left). The future of great writing from MLC alumni is clearly bright!
Then on the 17th, the Grade 6s took part in my brand new workshop entitled Geography is History: How topography shaped China’s remarkable history! We talked about China’s grasslands in the North (from which invaders came on horseback); its mountains and deserts in the West and North West (which formed a natural barrier both inwards and outwards); its fertile deltas in the East (which formed the first united China under Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi) and the seas beyond (from which trade came and went, and ultimately the incursion of foreign powers, and invasion of the Japanese navy, which together precipitated the End of Empire). I hope the girls found the subject as fascinating as I did!!
Huge thanks to my friend, and fabulous Junior School Head of Library, Tracey Ricchini, who you can just see at the back of the Book Bugs in the top photo! She made a fantastic Ching Shi, the evil (and real life) pirate queen from The Tale of Desmond Dog! More photos to come!
Meet Harry, a HUGE book reader!
June 3, 2018 at 4:02 pm | Posted in Australian schools, children's literacy, Hobart, The Hutchins School | Leave a commentTags: Chinese Zodiac, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Run Run Rat, The Tale of Temujin, The Year of the Rat, The Year of the Tiger
Meet Harry from The Hutchins School, who I met in the Junior Library during my Tassie visit a fortnight ago! Harry has such a huge smile on his face because he LOVES READING BOOKS! And he told me that his bedroom at home is so full of books, there’s hardly any room for his bed! Now THAT’S what I call a great reader! I bet Harry is a fantastic writer and thinker too, because that’s what you become when you read lots of books for leisure and fun! Well done Harry!
ps Harry was born in the Year of the Tiger and I was born in the Year of the Rat – hence the books we are holding!
Sunday: Event at Petrarch’s Bookshop, Launceston!
May 30, 2018 at 10:49 am | Posted in Being an Author, Bookshop event, Launceston | Leave a commentTags: Petrarch's Bookshop, Storm Whale, The Chinese Calendar Tales
On Sunday I jumped in my car and drove for two and half hours up to Launceston, Tasmania’s northern “capital”. It was the most glorious drive, and brought back so many memories of childhood drives with my parents and siblings so many years ago! In Launceston, I spent a wonderful afternoon at the famous Petrarch’s Bookshop, doing readings of Storm Whale and signing books! Above is the lovely Murphy family, who bought a whole stack of my Chinese Calendar Tales and who fell in love with Storm Whale! Below you can see me (top left) with friendly and helpful staff Kristine Hudson and Holly Cooper to my right and left, and me with Ros Sydes, a Launceston writer to the right! Thank you Marcus and Karen, owners of Petrarch’s, for inviting me!
Friday: Hutchins School Visit!
May 30, 2018 at 9:33 am | Posted in Australian schools, Hobart, The Hutchins School, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: Books about whales, Chinese history, National Simultaneous Story Time, Storm Whale, The Chinese Calendar Tales, The Tale of Desmond Dog
My Hobart visit kicked off with a fabulous morning with the boys at The Hutchins Junior School! It just happened to be National Simultaneous Story Time that very morning, so we started off with a fabulous story from the Headmaster, Dr Rob McEwen! He was a spectacular story-reader! Then the Grade 1 to 3 boys listened to me reading Storm Whale and simply didn’t stop asking questions and making some great observations about whales afterwards! Before my second session, the Grade 4 to 6 boys and I listened to the Deputy Principal Alan Jones (wearing a very interesting hat!) reading yet another story to the kids, after which I introduced them to the evil pirate queen Ching Shih and some fabulous Chinese history with The Tale of Desmond Dog! Many thanks to my dear friend, and head librarian, Kate Read, for inviting me again! More photos to come!
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