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For the love of books

On Friday we celebrated Book Week Activity Day, with our Library staff bringing ����AV’s rich connections with reading to life through author visits, writing competitions and a dress up parade.

Since 1945, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) has brought children and books together during CBCA Book Week. This year, our Library staff created activities and competitions around the theme of Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds to highlight the importance of reading.

Head of Library and Information Services, Ms Rosie Stevenson said, “What a wonderful day our Book Week Activity Day was! Having all our activities rolled into one day really allowed students to engage in the talks and participate in the different creative tasks throughout the day."

Ms Stevenson said, "Our Kindergarten to Year 2 students started the morning with an illustrating class with author/illustrator Sara Acton. From her home artist studio, Sara talked everyone through the process of writing and illustrating a book and where her inspiration comes from – her pets are her main source of inspiration. Sara also discussed how important it is to research a topic and gather ideas before you start to write and illustrate. She showed students the research she’d undertaken and the images she’d collected about dinosaurs before writing her book Dinosaurs day out. One of Sara’s well-known characters is Mr Walker, the Labrador from The Tales of Mr Walker and she shared with us, all her photos of the real Mr Walker and all the drawings she did of him before deciding what he should look like. Everyone had an opportunity to drawing their own Mr Walker with great success!"

"The rest of the day was spent illustrating and writing postcards from the place their chosen dress up character was from!"

"Much loved author Jaclyn Moriaty joined students in Year 3 to Year 6 for an intensive creative writing workshop focusing on character and setting. Jaclyn shared some of her techniques for engaging her creativity with the students, including lying down and having a quick rest because the best ideas come just before sleep! In the afternoon, students took on board Jaclyn’s suggestions about creating interesting characters and applying it to their own writing. They also wrote thank you letters and reflections, which have been shared with Jaclyn."

"The students in Senior School were provided with an opportunity to hear author/poet Steven Herrick perform from his campervan whilst in Victoria’s lockdown. His engaging poetry sparked interest in the girls and no doubt many of them resonated with his theme of growing up in Australia,” said Ms Stevenson.

A huge thank you to our Library staff, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make Book Week Activity Day such a success. And thank you to all our students and staff for making the effort to dress up and for sharing their favourite books with us all.