I just wanted to say the kids are all over your books. I read Dog Wars with the 3/4’s and they LOVE it (as do I). Emily Rodda, Roald Dahl and Jeff Kinney have all been seriously overshadowed by the great Michael Wagner. – Merryn Clift, Deer Park North Primary School

Fiona Wood, author of Six Impossible Things shares some insight into what she does in her writing workshops at schools:

*This week I took a two-part writing workshop with a group of year 8 students at Carey. Their teacher (hello Mr Mason) and I decided it would be interesting to focus on the idea of ‘place’, following on from their elective study area ‘Backpacking with Books’.

We looked at short excerpts by some fantastic writers, from Chekhov to John Green & David Levithan, and how they evoke a sense of place. We looked at some strategies for the toolbox that can be used when writing descriptive prose. And then the years 8s wrote, using some of these strategies. Workshop writing is more about process than product, but some really beautiful work came out of the exercises we did.*

Read more over at Fiona’s Blog

It feels far too long since attending the last Reading Matters Conference, so we were pretty stoked to read the lineup for the 2011 conference. The program will include:

Cassandra Clare (US)
 Markus Zusak 
Melina Marchetta
 Rebecca Stead (US) 
Karen Healey 
Ananda Braxton-Smith
 Kirsty Eagar 
Ron Brooks
 Brenton McKenna 
Leanne Hall 
Lucy Christopher (tbc) 
Delphine de Vigan (tbc) (France)
 Kate Burridge
 Zoe Sadokierski
 Denis Wright (NZ) 
Cath Crowley
 Jane Burke 
Laura Buzo 
Oliver Phommavanh 
Richard Newsome