As I mentioned in my last post, I was invited to speak to a group of Year 5 & 6 students at Brunswick North Primary last week. I knew I was in good company when it turned out the kids were already well-versed in comic books. Not only did the name tags on their desks feature each student’s favourite comic book character, there was also a lending library of old comics available to the class (as donated by their teacher Travis). One girl blindsided me with how awesome she was when she told me her favourite superhero was Songbird.
All the kids expressed a lot of enthusiasm for reading and writing, and provided me with a lot of insightful questions to answer. The artists in the class were interested to hear about the process behind designing a book cover, as related by a guy who’s only passingly familiar with the details of that himself (though I think I bluffed my way through pretty well). Unfortunately, the time passed far more quickly than I’d have liked, and after signing a few books and posters I was waving goodbye.
I’ll be bundling together a collection of comics to donate to the class’s library to say thanks to Travis and all the kids for their hospitality and the opportunity to speak to them. And thanks also have to go to Natasha at Book Bonding in Niddrie for arranging everything! If you get the chance, you should definitely drop in and see the shop. Natasha’s great and really knows her stuff…though I’d be surprised if she also knew who Songbird was.
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In addition to fielding questions in a classroom, I also spent some time last week being interviewed by Stephanie Campisi for her blog Read in a Single Sitting. We covered a lot of ground in the interview, ranging from what makes a strong female character to the appeal of action books for young readers. If you’re interested, you can read the interview here, and when you’re done with me waxing lyrical I heartily recommend checking out the rest of the site. You’ll find that Stephanie is a far more interesting and productive blogger than I could ever hope to be.
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…speaking of which! I don’t know how much I can say at this stage, but it looks like I’ll be writing a series of guest posts over on another prominent blog in the very near future. More details will follow when final confirmation comes through, but I’m hoping to blog about all the aspects of writing that I mean to cover here and never quite get around to.
Too busy making multiple references to Songbird, I guess.
Steven Lochran 