chief minister's reading challenge visit

I had the great pleasure of visiting Rosary PS here in Canberra today, as part of my role as an Ambassador for the Chief Minister's Reading Challenge. What could be more fun than talking books, showing how books are made, celebrating books, sharing books, laughing about books, and reminding children how much fun they are (not to mention how they make their brains and hearts grow super huge).

Chief Minister's Reading Challenge 2017

The Chief Minister's Reading Challenge is a glorious literacy initiative in the ACT, and yesterday I had the great pleasure of visiting Maribyrnong Primary School in Canberra to chat to the kids about books, books, books--and how very much squirrels love books. These are smart kids. They agreed.

What a beautiful, warm welcome and what a clutch of bright, curious, book-loving kids (a sure sign there's some phenomenal teaching going on). Kids never, ever fail to astound and delight me with their knowledge and the way they think. It was wonderful to spend time with them, and it's great to see so many schools participating in the CMRC every year--from Canberra and our region. I love it when schools place literacy as such a high priority... it's a vital life skill, after all, and can really, truly change lives.

After a wonderful introduction, I took the kids through book type, genre and the book creation process.

I have this REALLY scary shark picture in this brilliant 3D book, which I try to scare the kids with. They never scare. They just laugh. It's so annoying.

This book, Metropolis, always elicits oohs and ahhs. It's 10 feet long. Who wouldn't ooh and ahh? Who wouldn't go bananas over books, in general? They are just that good.

Big thanks to Hannah and Jo from the CMRC for organising this visit, and for coming along. If you want to learn more about the Reading Challenge for your school, just click on the poster below. It's wonderful stuff.

Chief Minister's Reading Challenge

From Monday 22 February to Friday 9 September 2016, the Chief Minister's Reading Challenge for the ACT, will be in full swing. Kids all over the territory are invited to participate in this wonderful initiative--and all they need to do is read 15 books in that time (or many, many more, of course!).

Schools can register for the Challenge online and each student keeps an individual reading record. Books can include anything that interests them, from poetry to novels and non-fiction.

I'm so excited to be a CMRC ambassador for 2016, along with other local book aficionados, Irma Gold, Jack Heath, Tracey Hawkins and Virginia Haussegger.

Learn more about how to participate here, and meet the 2016 Ambassadors here. We will be visiting schools around town these coming six months... I hope to see you at your school!