ENGLISH

YEAR 8 AUTHOR TALK

On Wednesday 22 August, the Year 8s had the opportunity to listen to a guest speaker, in celebration of Book Week. The author was the one and only John Larkin. He is the writer of a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award-winning book ‘The Shadow Girl’, which is about a homeless 8th grade girl who lived on the trains in Sydney. He has also written ‘The Pause’, which is about a boy who had bottled up his pain for too long and decides to take a risky action.

During the presentation, John spoke about what inspires him to write, which he said are the people he meets and family members. He highlighted the parts of his life that he thought were memorable and made people laugh; he was a great comedian. John Larkin shared some very funny and breathtaking stories about his childhood and some of the experiences he has encountered when speaking at other schools.

Mia Richards

Year 8L

Here are some comments from Year 8 students who attended John’s speech:

I learned that being an author is hard work, namely, to think of ideas, and how to get published.

Mia Richards

Year 8L

He expressed the fact that no matter what background you come from, you CAN be successful. You might even become successful in the thing you least suspect. As long as you work hard and believe in yourself, you can achieve it.

Ethan Stubbs

Year 8F

John Larkin is a comical person with a really wacky personality. His stories were hilarious and very inspiring. I thought the presentation was amazing, especially the story about a poor young girl who lived on a train. It was a great experience and one of the highlights of my week.

Lisa Liu

Year 8L

It was a very nice and entertaining experience as John Larkin told stories that were funny and imaginable. One story he told was about a girl who went to a school in Sydney. She was treated like a queen by her classmates because she was homeless and lived on a train, all by herself. She was able to do her homework and take care of herself. John later wrote a book about the girl called ‘The Shadow Girl’. This shows that inspiration for writing can come from anywhere or anyone around you.

Saiyam Gupta

Year 8L

BOOK WEEK YEAR 7 AUTHOR VISIT

On Thursday 23 August 2018, the Year 7 students of McKinnon were overjoyed to find out that we were having an author coming to our school in honour of Book Week.

For our author talk we had a young author named James Phelan, an Australian writer of thrillers and young adult novels. Some of his books are: Fox Hunt, The Last 13 series for teens, and the Jed Walker and Lachlan Fox thrillers. He told us that he had always loved writing short stories in school and that from a very young age he knew that he wanted to be a famous author.

There was something about Phelan’s personality that was really intriguing and he made his speech funny and enjoyable to listen to. He also talked about how he got the ideas for his Last 13 book series from nightmares he had had as a child. Phelan explained to us how he linked the characters in his books to people in his own life, such as his family and friends. We were very lucky to have such an amazing writer come to our school to inspire us, and to share such an incredible journey of following his writing dreams.

Isabelle Berger

Year 7N