John Carr's author/illustrator visit

Today we had the pleasure of a visit from John Carr, thanks to Read NZ Te Pou Muramura with support from Creative NZ.

John was absolutely delightful and had the children in stitches. John shared some fun short writing prompts with the children, ideas about cartoon drawing, stand-up comedian type jokes (for kids) and even had a rap challenge. The children and staff were fully engaged.

Pretending to be a cow while reading poetry to a field of cows

I read a quote on Goodreads just yesterday that reminded me of John Carr: 

“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself..." Charles Baudelaire

After lunch, John ran a cartooning workshop. John looked at facial expressions to express feelings, body language, characteristics - and gave the children a few prompts so that they can make their own cartoons and funny poems. The children very quickly came up with some amazing ideas - I have asked them to carry on working on their drawings and poems at home and to bring them in to show me.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month:

At the end of the day, John presented his book, Manu's Journey to Emma. We are so proud of Emma, an incredibly brave cancer survivor, and talented cat cartoonist. John wrote Manu's Journey about a young owl's journey to recover from cancer. He wrote it as part of the "Big Hoot" project which raised funds for the Child Cancer Foundation. You may remember our owl, Blossom (who now lives in the library) was part of the "Little Hoot" (the school owls). John signed the book and had a lovely chat with Emma. I believe she is looking forward to reading it.

Thank you ever so much, John, for your humour, warmth and creativity. You are inspirational indeed!