Author visit: Emma Allen

From Rachael Hind and Gemma Wilson, Junior School Teacher Librarians

Our Years 4-6 co-curricular book club, known as Beyond the Book Club, has recently been participating in the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Shadow Judging Project.

This project empowers young people to read and critique the Book of the Year shortlists and choose their own winners. We are focussing on the Picture Book of the Year Award category.

As part of this project, we were delighted to spend an afternoon with talented author Emma Allen, who shared with us her writing process.

We learnt a lot about the process of creating a picture book and were surprised how long it can take. It was fascinating to see Emma’s first drafts, storyboards and illustration roughs.