After a stressful week of work I gladly enjoyed helping libraries celebrate the NZ Post Book Award Festival week which is held every year. The festival had been held all week with different Libraries holding events, such a story telling and reading, authors signing their books, drawing competitions and dress-ups, and a co-worker and myself decided to volunteer at one of the libraries by holding a colouring competition.

Kids (big and small) enjoyed face painting. Yes yours truly also got coerce into having her face painted. But as you can see these kids really enjoyed themselves. There was also making your own bracelets’, pendants, bands etc… table, along with toy shooting range and our colouring competition. I managed to draw some of the pictures while others were photocopied from printouts. Here are some of the efforts displayed. One of the pictures used was from the book I reviewed for PPBF last

Friday, I need a new Bum. See here.

We also made and iced many muffins to feed the hungry mob, as well there was candy floss and popcorn. Everything was free for the day, to help kids enjoy reading and having fun.

This weekend is our Queen’s Birthday Weekend. Every year New Zealand celebrates the English Queen’s Birthday in the first week of June, and every year there is an announcement of the Queen’s Honours. This year it was lovely to see Betty Gilderdale receiving the NZ Order of Merit in this year’s Queen’s Honours for services to children’s literature. Here is a lovely article on her in our National Paper… http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11265877

It was interesting to read that one of the pictures I used in our colouring competition (The little Yellow Digger) was not only made into a series by Betty, but it has just celebrated 20years in print and over 400,000 copies. I was amazed to learn that Betty never really intended to write a children’s book and even more amazing that none of the books were published until after she had retired. A wonderful story full of colourful pictures of the book and celebration of the 20 years you will find here… http://www.booksellers.co.nz/book-news/little-yellow-digger-celebrates-20-years-print you will also learn that hubby had no intention of illustrating her books in the beginning and now draws diggers all the time.

Here’s hoping you had a lovely weekend in your neck-of-the-woods.