Kinder kids

I went to my local kinder for my fortnightly reading session this morning. I was running late and grabbed a handful of books to take with me. One of them was I Spy with Inspector Stilton by Judith Rossell.

Usually my main audience is girls with a couple of boys flitting in and out as their restless legs will take them, but today the balance was different. They LOVED Inspector Stilton, boys and girls both. I had boys fighting over the right to find the things on the page and several times had to halt the 'finding' to get the boys to remove their heads and bodies from the page!

After Inspector Stilton the boys stayed too, for me to read different books, ones from the kinder bookshelves. That led to a conversation about me having to go home and do some work, that work being writing stories.

I've been going to the kinder with this group all year, and it's the first time most of those boys have come to join the reading with me, let alone ask questions about who I was and what I do. They were intrigued with the notion of someone actually writing stories as a job, and also with the idea that I'd brought books written by people I knew.

One other link...I'd taken Sally Murphy's 'Pemberthy Bear' illustrated by Jacqui Grantford and also another story 'Squeezy Cuddle, Dangly Legs' Jacqui has illustrated. They were very interested to see a picture of 'Pemberthy Bear' book in 'Squeezy...' It seemed to make sense of the notion that books are created, do not merely appear.