What an amazing week!

What a fabulous week of celebrating books!

Thank you to Jo for organising a week of author and illustrator visitors. Many of the staff were just as excited to meet them as the children. 

Anne Kayes, Tessa Duder, Lucy Elliott, Erin Devlin, Jo van Dam and Miriama Kamo all wowed our kids with their literary skills. We thank them for their time and the inspiration they gave our children to write, read and illustrate.

The Book Character Parade was even bigger and better than last year. The morning mist certainly added to the dramatic atmosphere. Thank you to Wiremu for starting the day as our kaikōrero for our whakatau. You did a wonderful job of welcoming our grandparents to our school. The costumes were outstanding. Well done to all the creative children and parents who put time into creating such clever costumes.

It was wonderful to have so many grandparents at school. The children loved having them at the parade and in class reading stories and as a captive audience to hear some of the stories they had written too.

Stacey Morrison was a hit at assembly and kept an audience of approximately 800 people captivated with her magnificent reading of the Lion in the Meadow in te reo Pākehā and te reo Māori! A special thank you to Sasha from Hatchette NZ for lending us the giant version of the bilingual book. It was almost bigger than Stacey!!!

A huge thank you to Sonya and her team of mums (and all the bakers) for putting on morning tea. The hall was abuzz with grandparents getting to know one another and some long lost connections being remade. 

And thank you to the parents who helped make the Book Fair happen - the helpers and the buyers! We raised $4700 that will be spent on new books for our library.