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Kids Book Fest Wrap Up

On Saturday, The Little Bookroom celebrated it's 58th birthday with it's inaugural Kids Books Fest. It was a day of celebrating books and reading with a session for young readers in the morning and I attended the afternoon for primary school children.

(Watch in full screen by clicking on the square)

By 2pm everyone was seated and eager for our exciting afternoon to begin...

Author vs Illustrator Debate
We were treated to a lively debate between author and illustrator partners  chaired by Peter Helliar (Frankie Fish series). The panel was made up of Danny Katz and Mitch Vane (The Little Lunch and Poppa Platoon series), Andrew McDonald and Ben Wood (Real Pigeons series) and Andrew Hansen and Jessica Roberts (Bab Sharkey and the Animal Mummies series). They had to convince us which is more important - words or pictures? What do you think?

Illustration Battle
The illustrators battled each other under extreme pressure with just THREE minutes to draw requests from the audience! It's not easy drawing a moth with cheese for antennas or a zombie unicorn with a banana horn. Mitch Vane and Ben Wood's illustrations were so close they used 'Paper, Scissors, Rock' to decide the winner! The final result was a draw between Mitch Vane and Jessica Roberts.

Total Quack Up! 
Sally Rippin and Adrian Beck are the editors of Total Quack Up! They wanted to do something to help raise money for Dymocks Children's Charities who provide books to children who don't have access to books. Sally and Adrian approached eight author friends to write a funny story for the book and James Foley to be the illustrator. All of these generous people donated their story and illustrations to create this book. Total Quack Up! is guaranteed to have you laughing and quacking up! Buying a copy means you will be helping other kids to have books so they can enjoy reading too.

We had laughed lots while listening to Adrian and Sally read 'Who Blocked Up the Dunny?' written by Ella Wallace who won a competition to have her story published as James Foley illustrated the 'unplugging' part of the story. 

Gastronauts Launch
James Foley launched his book Gastronauts which is the third book in his Sally Tinker series. We were all blown away when James showed us his dummy book of illustrations that stretched across the front of the room and round the corner! 

In Conversation: Sally Rippin and Elliot Perlman
Elliot Perlman is a famous author of adult books who has written his first book for children called The Adventures of Catvinkle Elliot told Sally that Ula the dog in the story is based on his dog called Ula when he was growing up. The children in the audience were very lucky to be the first children to hear Elliot read his book aloud - what a treat it was!

 A BIG thank you to Leesa and the staff of The Little Bookroom and all of the authors and illustrators for a fabulous afternoon of celebrating books and reading. See you next year!

Happy reading!

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