Today I had a wonderful time at the Heyfield Wetlands doing story time as part of their Kids Fun Day. I haven’t done a story time like this before, so it was a bit of an adventure.
I raided my Picture Book shelf for some of our favourite picture books that the kids may not have heard of before and put them in a basket to take to the Fun Day, along with a table to sell my own books and picnic rugs for kids to sit on. My 17 year old son came with me to help on the day.
The day started out slowly, but we soon had kids looking for stories. There was a lovely kid who chose Ori’s Clean Up by Anne Helen Donnolly because he loved octopus’. Before we read the story, he told me a lot of fact about the octopus, including where ink comes out of!
Another child wandered off from her family to read stories. She was sitting happily looking at books when her parents came and found her!
There was no set times for stories, I would read whenever there were kids who wanted stories. Next time I do something like this, I plan to have better signage to let people know what we’re doing.
It was so much fun reading stories to the kids who came to our tent. If I’d had copies of those books for sale, I’m sure they would have sold.
I also had a number of people come and buy copies of my books as well as the anthologies I have stories in. This means I have some new fans.
We had such a fun day, talking about books and sharing stories with kids. I can’t wait to do this again.
