Library News continued..

In collaboration with the Excellence and High Abilities Program, this year the library team organised three authors to visit our library. In Term 2, Australian YA author Oliver Phommavanh addressed all Year 7 students. The students responded enthusiastically to Oliver’s presentation and the way he used drama and humour to communicate ideas about narrative and content. In Term 3, popular YA author, James Phelan, presented to all Year 8 students. James is an Australian writer of thrillers and, in the afternoon session, ran a writers’ workshop with almost fifty Year 8 students who expressed an interest in creative writing. 

As librarians we are seeing how graphic novels are becoming increasingly popular amongst our students so, as our final Term 4 presenter, we invited renowned Manga-artist Kenny Chan to speak at our library. Kenny spent Friday October 13th in the library presenting to graphic novel fans and Japanese language students. In an engaging series of three presentations, Kenny showed students how to draw Manga-style faces that convey emotion through character expressions. Kenny’s first presentation of the day was to Year 10 and 11 Japanese language students as well as some interested Year 9 Japanese language students. He conducted this workshop in Japanese and it was fabulous to see the students respond so well to his description of how Manga serves as significant cultural entertainment in Japan. The second presentation was to all Year 8 Japanese language students, and he inspired the students to create their own Manga characters. His final workshop was to graphic novel fans at lunchtime. These lucky students listened and drew as Kenny explained the history of Manga in Japan and the codes and conventions that graphic artists use to communicate their meaning without the need for many words. 

We hope you enjoy some of the photos taken during Kenny Chan’s visit. 

Penny Earl

Teacher-librarian (on behalf of the Library Team)