Today, the year 2 neighbourhood was fortunate enough to have author Sally Rippin come and speak to us. The students are currently investigating writing narratives and developing their understanding of what goes into creating amazing and engaging stories.
Sally shared with us how she got started as an author. From the young age of 7, Sally had begun to write her own books. She travelled with her family a lot, so her mum would constantly have books for them to read and when they had finished those, she would have paper and pencils for her and her siblings to create their own books. When she was a teenager, she actually created a book for a child she was looking after! Amy was transformed into a mermaid for a day!
Sally then talked about how she comes up with the ideas for her books. She explained there were two ways she found inspiration – your imagination and your experiences. Sometimes it can be a mixture of those two things.
Sally recounted a story in one of her Billy B Brown books- The Beautiful Haircut- that actually come from a real life exerpience she had! In the story, Billy is playing hairdressers with her dolls, but wanted to make it a bit more real, so she found a pair of scissors in the bathroom drawer and proceeded the cut one of her pigtales off! She realised she looked a bit lopsided, so she cut the other one off! When Jack arrives he encourages her to go and tell her mum. This story actually happened to Sally! But the kicker is – she actually cut her sisters pigtales off too!
Sally encourages us to think about an experience you have had and use that to drive further stories.
We were lucky enough to hear about Sally’s development of her books ‘Polly and Buster’. Sally wanted to come up with a story about friends. Friends who were very different and the idea that ‘what if you weren’t allowed to be friends any more?’ Sally started off with inventing her characters first. She always wanted to write a story about a witch. She wanted her witch to have a best friend that was completely different to her – a monster!
This was one of the first images that Sally came up with for her Polly and Buster Books.
As time progressed, Sally changed the way that Polly and Buster looked, using different drawing materials to create her characters.
Sally also did research for her characters. Looking at different monsters and witches in books and movies.
When she was happy with her characters, she came up with the story. She wanted Buster to be empathetic. Sally needed Buster to help Polly with her feelings.
Sally gave the students the opportunity to ask her some questions!
Lexie – “how many books have you published?” – Sally says that she has written over 50 books.
Allegra – “why did you decide to be an author?” – Sally said that sometimes if you read a book, it can change the way you feel about things. She wanted to help kids feel better about themselves.
Monet – “Why these characters specifically?” – Sally rememembered watching the movie ‘The Never Ending Story’. She liked the idea of the luck dragon – she wanted her own luck dragon!
Arlo – “Are you writing a third book of Polly and Buster?’ Sally is excitedly writing the third book now!
Aliye – “How did you write the Jack stories?’ Sally says that she is a mixture between both Jack and Billy.
Once Sally had finished her presentation, the students opened their own minds and started to work on their own stories! The students were encouraged to either continue writing a story in their English book, work on a character in their Writers Notebook or read a story to help provoke their thinking.
The students put their imagination to work and started to come up with some great characters!
Sally has offered to come back towards the end of term and see where the students are up to with their books!