Amazing Authors from years 4, 5 and 6, ventured to Federation Square to listen to author and illustrator, Graeme Base. William, BJ and Niar D explain

On Tuesday the 29th of August, a selection of students from Year 4-6 from The Lakes P-9 School got the chance to go to the Melbourne Writers Festival. There we met a famous author known as Graeme Base and asked him a few questions.

At the start of the day, the students went onto the bus at around 10:00 to go to the city exhibition. When we arrived, we went into Federation Square to sit and eat our food. Afterwards, we went outside into the fresh air to play at the playground until it was time to meet Graeme Base.

When it hit 12:30pm, students from other schools joined us in a hall to watch Mr Base get interviewed by a woman. Graeme explained to us about his history and how he became an author and illustrator, which was very interesting to hear as it was very eventful and hard for him, although he did go through in the end and he was successful. He told us how almost every single book that he wrote was based on a real life experience that he had by himself or with his family. An example of this is one of his newer books, "Eye to Eye", which was when he and his kids saw a killer whale up close.

Graeme's first ever book was "My Grandma live in Gooligulch" which was published over 20 years ago. He didn't think that it was going be a "banger" but it was a huge hit and sold a vast amount of copies to the whole world. After this, he continued to make more picture books which were all as successful as his first one, from books teaching kids English techniques, to books for entertainment purposes.

When the interview was finished, Graeme Base went to sign books outside. Unfortunately none of the students from The Lakes got anything signed as we had to take the bus back to our school before the bell went for the end of the day. We went back to school and wrote a recount about the whole day.

Overall, the excursion to the Melbourne Writers Festival was very fun and it was great to meet Graeme Base in person. He answered all the questions thoroughly and he was really kind to the audience. I think that Graeme Base is a very hardworking author and illustrator who seeks entertainment from all ages.

Situli also had a fantastic time at the Writer's Festival, as she explains:

On Tuesday 29th of August we went to Federation Square to visit the Melbourne Writers Festival to see Graeme Base, a famous author and illustrator. Just after we arrived, we sat down to eat since we weren't going to get anytime afterwards to eat our snack and lunch.

After finishing our food we went on a short walk to a playground nearby and spent some time there. Then we walked back to where the interview was going to be held and sat down in the auditorium to see the live interview with Graeme Base.

He talked a lot about how each book had some story around how it was written. He said that most of the events in the book were events that he had experienced, mostly when travelling. For example in his book 'Eye to Eye' he was inspired by seeing a killer whale face to face in Antarctica.

He said that even back from when he was young he loved drawing and dreamt of becoming an artist when he grew up. Graeme told as that even though he liked English at school he never though of becoming an author. He later discovered that it would be better to write his own stories because it would be easier to relate his illustrations to the story-line.

Graeme told the next generation of writers to believe you can do anything you like. He said that the support from the people around him helped him to follow is dreams. He told young writers to write about things that you like so that it will inspire you even more to make your story better.

He taught us that the editing part (which he believes is the most important part of writing as you can change the words to more exciting and make longer phrases shorter and just keep the needed and crucial information there) is the most important part of a story.

All in all, I thought it was great to meet him and hear all about his inspirations and the past of his book journey. We all learnt a great amount of information from Graeme base while experiencing a bit of Federation Square. It was a splendid day!

Years 5 & 6 Amazing Authors

Written and Illustrated works.

Year 9: City Experience

From August to September, the Year 9 cohort ventured into the Melbourne City, as part of their Building Capacity Program. Apryl and Shannon from Year 9 Cadet Journalism reported on the event