The Book Vipers discussion

My son is in year 3 at school (KS2) and one of his targets is to 'engage with authors' are there any forums on the web that enable kids to do this? I'm a little concerned about cyber security though, I have to admit. Any advice will be welcome :-)

Thank you

Gosh I'm not sure, I know that if I've posted a review on an indy author they've replied to me, but not sure that'll work with well-known children's authors.

I use this for ideas for ideas for children's books for my three:
http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk
Not sure if they do author events though. Perhaps have a look at your local bookshop to see if they have any events. I have met a few authors at waterstones and my local bookshop

Hmm. Interesting. My son is Y4 and is a perfectly able reader, but it can take him a while to "engage" as it were.

When we are in the car, we've started listening to children's audiobooks and it definitely "engages" both of my children to really listen and talk about the book. We will happily listen to the same one twice to really get into the story. Obviously, it's not quite the same as real reading, but it's better than nothing, and a good use of car time to and from school or wherever else. We've done a couple of Michael Morpugo's which are wonderful stories.

Perhaps choose a couple of audiobooks by the same author, one you choose together, and perhaps then he will start to engage with that author, especially if it is an author he could have access to from school books as well - does he choose his own reading books at school?

The book people are doing the set of David Walliams as audio books for £14 at the moment

Oo, I don't think I realised Book People did audiobooks. Are they CD's or downloads? My internet is excruciatingly (is that a word?) slow, so certain websites just don't load so I can't search it. Fortunately this one does!

http://www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp...

Try Michael Rosen he does loads of work with children's literature and goes into schools and entertains classes. I know he is on twitter if that helps.

I'll see if I can find the link when I'm not on the app where Mairi Hedderwick is talking about her Katie Morag stories. She was in a school doing a Q&A, so she must do them. Julia Donaldson I think does school talks too.

Probably best to go on the author's website and see whether they do school visits.

Here's the link http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/auth...

There's loads of children's authors talking on here, not just Mairi Hedderwick, although we particularly enjoyed her chat with the children - she's lovely.

Theres a couple of goodreads authors that I've got on my friends list and we message each other occassionally. Maybe you could find a childrens goodreads author and send them a message, in my experience most authors are happy to chat with you about their work and enjoy answering questions.

Do you have any local literary or book festivals? Our town runs one a couple of times a year and we usually have a children's author doing a presentation or interactive session. We recently had James Mayhew, author of the "Katie in/and...." and "Ella Bella" series who did a storytelling plus illustration session, painting whilst an orchestra played. It was amazing, my children were hopping up and down with excitement!

We have a couple of children's authors at FootSteps. I have tentatively uploaded forum software but I am not a Vbulletin specialist, however as it is not being used right now we could open it up to other authors and kids as a safe place to chat.

www.footsteps.co and go to the forum link. Any ideas on how to design/make it worthwhile will be taken seriously.

Daniel

Thanks all, this has been really helpful. My son is an avid reader so I don't have any problems getting him engaged, but his goal was for him to engage with authors. I will look at the above websites. Does anyone know of a chat forum for kids about books?

Sorry Alison, I misinterpreted your original post! I focussed on "engaging" rather than "with authors" which is the emphasis of your query! It had never occurred to me that there are online book chat options for children, but no reason why not as long as it is correctly set up.

I found this on the Goodreads blog https://www.goodreads.com/newsletters...

It looks as if you can post questions to YA authors via this link.

Hi Elizabeth, that's great thank you!

Try these guys. New website created last year to help encourage young children's reading and writing skills. They feature authors and may be able to offer advice http://www.woodofwords.org/