Here are the highlights from my 2012 adventures in the world of Children’s and Young Adult literature. Certainly, the day I awoke to discover I was half man, half dog will stay with me for some time.
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| While not as life-changing as the dog thing, leading a group of brilliant young writers on a beach story safari was fun. |
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| Wandering the USC grounds at LA Times Festival of Books was good. (NB: That’s not me. They wouldn’t let me on the plane with my sword.) |
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| Seeing sessions with Judy Blume, Jack Gantos, John Green, Dame Julie Andrews, Jeff Kinney (pictured) and other kid and YA lit legends. |
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| Catching up with my it’s yr life co-writer Tempany Deckert who lives in the LA and has a fine canine companion named Cosmo. |
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| I spent lots of time with hardworking, energetic, dedicated and kooky librarians. |
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| Eating a real-life American school lunch on a tray was memorable. Not the taste of it so much as the lifelong dream realised. |
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| I loved seeing our Story Scrapbook beta app launched and watching kids everywhere experimenting with it and giving lots of useful feedback for its development. |
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| Touring Tasmanian schools and visiting Hobart’s MONA gallery, one of the best in the world. (This is a waterfall dropping watery words gathered from the Web.) |
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| Somerset Festival of Literature with high-energy audiences and authors like James Roy, Oliver Phommavanh and Jacquie Harvey. |
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| Writing workshops have evolved! |
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| Getting our short film, Soar, out there on SMH TV. It’ll be at the end of its distribution run in Jan and we’ll make it available on Youtube. |
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| Discovering new technique of freewriting first draft material in Notes on phone or a notepad while I walk on the beach. Doesn’t feel like work, but is. And prevents my early death from being seated eight hours a day in front of a laptop. |
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| Sydney Writers Festival Primary School Days was a wild week. Big audiences, some excellent authors to work alongside, great festival team, kids excited about books and lots of time to write each morning. |
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| Seeing Jane Austen take on a Dalek. |
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| Spending two weeks in Armidale on a residency, visiting schools, university and being in a fresh place to write. |
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| Notepads. Filling notepads. I enjoyed my writing this year more than ever, I think. |
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| Absolute highlight of 2012 for me was making a 3-minute video with this class that inspired kids all over Australia to raise $20,000 to build a library in Cambodia through Room to Read. I’m brainstorming ideas for 2013. Hope you can help! |
Thanks to everyone I worked with this year – authors, kids, librarians, teachers, readers, co-writers, festival and publishing folk. I feel like a very lucky man to do this work. I hope you have a peaceful, creative and adventurous 2013.
