I love the author life. Sometimes I have to remind myself that what I do is work.

Last week I had a flying visit to Sydney. I flew over, spent a day working on a school, another day checking in with two of my publishers, and on the third day visited some of my favourite Sydney landmarks. Throw in a catch-up with two of the most wonderful friends a person could want to have- both fellow authors – and I had the perfect combination of work and pleasure.

The purpose of the trip was to visit St John Vianney’s Primary   in the suburb of Doonside. There I worked with the year 5 students in a whole day workshop. We explored Do Not Forget Australia,and the story behind it, and by the end of the day every child had written at least two new poem drafts. These young writers were keen,passionate and amazing, and their teachers were pretty special too.

An added, unexpected, bonus  was the opportunity to meet the two year one classes who, with the help of the librarian, crashed my workshop to each shake my hand, introduce themself and hand me a Flat Stanley they had cut out and coloured in. I had told the librarian how much I remembered Flat Stanley from my childhood, and this had given her the idea. The children, she told me later, were just excited to think that Flat Stanley might travel in a plane. But then another teacher told me that there were many children living in the Western Suburbs of Sydney who might ever have seen landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And an idea formed.

So, for the remainder of my trip, wherever I went, Flat Stanley went, too. I did attract plenty of funny looks, but I had lots of fun,and I think Stanley did, too.He even met up with Sage Cookson along the way.

Here’s what I ended up with:

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The final video was, I must confess, put together on a plane and, as such, I can see a couple of flaws I would have fixed had I had more clicking space for the mouse, and better eyesight to spot a couple of proofreading and resolution issues. But, alas, I saved the project to video format without saving it in editable format.

Still, I had fun, and hope the children enjoy what I have done.