On Monday, 17th August, author Juliette MacIver visited St Brendan's. With most of New Zealand going into COVID-19 Level 2 restrictions just a few days before, we were grateful that Juliette was still happy to visit this week and start off our 2020 Book Week Celebrations.
Juliette held three 30-40 minute sessions, instead of the two 1 hour sessions originally planned, to reduce the numbers at each session to below 100. She focused on a different picture book in each of her sessions, as well as touching on others as opportunity arose.
The first session was with our Explorers team (Yrs 1-3) and focused on the picture book That's Not a Hippopotamus. The most memorable moment was the dance she had them all perform to try and coax the very shy soft toy hippopotamus she had brought along out of her carrier bag!
The second session was with our Adventurers team (Yrs 4-6) which focused on the book Yak and Gnu. During this session Juliette asked the children where we might see someone using a kayak or canoe - the most amusing suggestion was "in a toilet"!!
The last session with our Navigators team (Yrs 7-8) was after a break for morning tea and focused on the books Gwendolyn and then Queen Alice's Palaces. Before she shared the second story she explained how she used rhyme in this book and then had the students come up with as many words as they could that rhymed with "knew" and "due". She then had them rank them from most likely to least likely to be used as building material for a palace.
With each group Juliette spoke about where she writes, sharing photographs of herself writing while doing yoga - authors ARE really good at telling stories! She explained that she likes rhyming stories and likes to write on blank paper without lines, that way she can move ideas around using arrows and make lists of words that rhyme with each other down the side of the page. Juliette explained that when she was at school she didn't like re-checking her writing but that now days she liked re-reading it and trying to make it better and better. She explained that she had had lots of stories rejected by publishers but that she keeps trying to improve them and some books were rejected several times before they were finally published.
Thank you for visiting our school Juliette, we very much enjoyed your visit and hope you enjoyed your time with us also.
Juliette's visit was organised through the Read NZ Te Pou Muramura "Writer's in Schools" programme with support from Creative New Zealand.
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