Last week it was my pleasure to accompany six stage 3 students to ‘lunch with the stars.’ We travelled to Wallsend Library and joined students from nine other local schools to spend the day with 12 authors and illustrators. We were welcomed by Katrina McKelvey, local author and President of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Newcastle who coordinated this event. Each of our ‘stars’ then introduced themselves and spoke about their craft and what motivated them.

We were seated with Lizzie Wilcock, author of Give Me Four Reasons, Losing It, Grieve, Thirst, and the Extinction series which students have been busy reading. We had a very lively and interesting discussion about the the choice of characters, settings and the plot. Our students thought it would make a great action packed adventure movie. Lizzie shared many helpful tips with students about writing.

Award winning author Libby Hathorn gave an inspiring keynote address. She spoke passionately of her love for poetry; reading it, being inspired by it, reciting it, teaching it, writing and dreaming about it. She recalled her very first published piece at the age of nine was a poem called Daffodil which bore a remarkable resemblance to a poem by Wordsworth of the same name. We took part in some readers theatre as she recited one of her latest picture books, Outside. She left us with the message that we should “believe in ourselves” and to always “hold fast to dreams,” the title of a favourite poem by Langston Hughes.

Three illustrators, Kirrili Lonergan, Gwynne Jones, and Liz Anelli then set us a challenge. Selected students randomly picked a noun, verb, and adverb from envelopes. We then had one minute to sketch the result. This was loads of fun!

After lunch students had the opportunity to mingle with the stars and get their autographs. Each student was also presented with a signed copy of Libby Hathorn’s book Thunderwith thanks to the James Patterson grant and MacLean’s booksellers.