Over the last few weeks, I’ve been visiting schools all over Hong Kong as part of Book Week celebrations and the Young Readers’ Festival. Thank you to all the teachers, librarians and students for such a warm welcome!
I shared The Last Garden (illustrated by Anneli Bray) and The Forgettery (illustrated by Laura Hughes). It was a whirlwind of talks with students from age 3-11, where I talked about story ideas, the writing and illustration process, and we explored the themes in each of the stories together. We made up stories, imagined new characters and the students had such brilliant questions and thoughtful responses.
Some of the teachers shared beautiful stories, poems and artwork, created by their students and inspired by The Last Garden. All of the work is full of creativity, curiosity and spark - I loved reading everything. I wish I could include them all, but here is a snapshot, including Clara's gorgeous story, with a beautiful illustration of her main character, Maya.
The examples here are shared here with permission of the students, parents and schools.
French International School
Poems
The opening of The Last Garden reads a bit like a poem, so one of the writing exercises available here is to create a poem based on a similar structure.
Here are some examples from: