By the Junior School Library Team

Renowned Australian children’s author Katrina Nannestad spent the day at Radford on Wednesday, 16 August. Her visit aimed to inspire young minds, foster a love of reading, and promote insights into the creative-writing process.

Katrina spoke to the Year 5 and 6 students about three of her heartfelt stories and how she created these historical fiction books. She explained that she undertakes meticulous research to build her factual knowledge, builds her characters and then creates vivid storytelling to place her readers in the heart of the historical settings. These stories encourage us to foster compassion, promote peace and stand up against injustice. Her stories masterfully interweave history, humanity, and hope.

All of Year 3 and 4 were entertained as Katrina talked about where she gets her ideas and inspiration for her stories. They are as follows:

• Other people, especially her brother and students she has taught.
• Her environment - where she grew up, especially the Central West in her books Red Dirt Diary.
• Her dreams - loves books and travelling, which were the inspiration for Travelling Bookshop.
• Her imagination: she spends hours each day just daydreaming. She calls it her “job” to daydream up crazy ideas.

Throughout the day, Katrina also ran two writing workshops for smaller groups of students across the four grades. Katrina guided them through a session on how to create relatable, engaging, and compelling characters. She guided them through several steps for building a character’s profile. Each student created their own character as they moved through the process. The first step is to start with a description of what type of character you are going to write about and then add a name. The next step is to explore different facets of a character’s personality, goals, motivations, and, most importantly – what’s in their pockets!

It was a great day, and Katrina’s messages of using our imaginations and observations of the smaller details in our world play crucial roles in the creative process.