Stu Duval Visit - Thursday 16 May & Friday 17 May

The brilliant Stu Duval visited Bledisloe School.

 

He drew one of his famous chalk pastel masterpieces, it took him only about 3 minutes to complete. The picture matched the story he was about to tell us. The told us an unpublished story called Wild the Wind.

 

The story was about a young boy named Angus who lived at Piha in the 1900’s. He was sent to WW1 with his 2 brothers in law, they were part of the ambush at Gallipoli. The 3 kiwi boys fought valiantly against the enemies.

There were a few teary eyes in the hall by the end of the story.

After the story we had a quiz and the first class that got 2 questions correct won the picture. We were so, so close to winning (Mrs Colliss was tempted to whisper an answer in Humo’s ear, but she didn’t want to be a cheat!) Room 14 now has it proudly in their room L  

Last night he did another performance for families in the school hall. He told one of his favourite stories, Pudding Pirates and drew another picture that went with the story. They held an auction for the picture and Jonathan almost won it, but was just outbid. In the end it was sold for $115.

Today we were lucky enough to again have time with Stu. He talked about how he writes his stories and showed us his writing scrapbooks where he keeps his ideas (they were amazing!) He gave us some writing tips such as, using the 5 senses in our writing, don’t repeat the same words, choosing the right path to create an interesting story.

One thing that stood out for a lot of us was creating a hook for the reader in the first sentence to catch their attention. He read some great examples from his books.

Some people were lucky enough to purchase one of his novels or reading books.

Mrs Colliss brought a book of short stories to read to the class. Stu even signed it for us.