One of the special events in our library this term was hosting author and illustrator Kylie Howarth.
Kylie is a graphic artist who has published three picture books, is working on a fourth and has almost finished her first short novel. She studied through SIDE when it was the Distance Education Centre (DEC) whilst completing Year 4 as her family travelled around Australia.
Her visit coincided with our 2018 Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book Week celebrations.
Kylie presented two online sessions for our Primary School students. For the younger students she shared writing and drawing ideas with a particular focus on her picture books 1,2 Pirate Stew and Fish Jam. For the upper primary she focussed on her picture book Chip, which has received a number of awards including being shortlisted for the 2017 CBCA Book of the Year.
Kylie uses a range of textures in her paintings including corrugated cardboard, bubble wrap, sticks, stones, rocks and vegetables such as potatoes. She showed the students how she built up the textures and finally how they looked when the book was published. The webcam was set up and Kylie drew with the students, both her character Toot in the first session and her character Chip in the second session. The students were able to use the video cam to share their drawings. The students responded enthusiastically to Kylie’s presentation and made some insightful comments both verbally and via text chat in Saba.
It was lovely to receive an email from Kylie:
Thanks again for inviting me to visit your school today.
It was wonderful to see how distance education works these days!
Such a fabulous system and delightful teachers and students :)
Visit Kylie's website at kyliehowarth.com
