My short story Operation Candy Cane was chosen to be featured on the Kids' Book Review website as part of the short story competition. The theme for December was 'Christmas'. This the first piece I have written to be published.

I can't tell you how excited I was to receive an email of congratulations from renowned Australian author, Tania McCartney and founder of Kids' Book Review.

I hope you enjoy it and this will be the start of my continued publishing success.

Cheers,
Rebecca.

Here is my first blog entry and I can’t think of writing on something more exciting. Tracey Lennon from my writing group, called Write Links and Book Links member had her very own book launch for the The True Book of Gnomes. It was held this week at Avid Reader, West End on Tuesday 3 December 2013.

I couldn’t think of a better location to hold the book launch. Avid Reader has a great café and deck out back where all the guests mingled for drinks and nibbles. The deck was decorated with an incredible array of gnomes and mushrooms, which are actually gnomes. Read the book to find out more.

Author Annie O’Dowd launched the book for Tracey and she did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of the book and giving an overall fun picture of the life of gnomes.

 I love hearing the story of how books came to be and they often require a lot of love, nurturing, imagination and inspiration to bring them to life. Tracey’s gnome journey began all the way back when her son was in Grade 7 and he is now in his first year of university when the book was launched. After speaking with a mum whose son has dyslexia, which is someone who struggles with learning to read, spell and write, Tracey was inspired to create a book with a low reading age. Find out more information about dyslexia from The Australian Dyslexia Association Inc.

The True Book of Gnomes is a compendium, which is a short but comprehensive body of work all about gnomes. Her book ingeniously is structured like a non-fiction book with a Table of Contents, allowing readers to choose what sections of the book to read and in what order. This is absolute freedom for a child or adult who can read small sections at a time and easily locate where they want to go in the book. It also has a Glossary for all those non-fiction lovers.

The book also contains many text types, such as narrative, newspapers, quizzes, plays, procedures, riddles, interviews, poems, music and much more. This appeals to a broad range of readers and enables people to access forms of writing they wouldn’t normally read.

The True Book of Gnomes is a visual narrative, which creatively uses a collage style of photos, illustrations, text boxes, speech bubbles and more to communicate the text to the reader. This helps to keep the reader’s attention by drawing their eye to different features in the illustrations. Tracey has demonstrated her fantastic skills as a graphic designer and illustrator in putting this book together.

Another feature to hook children in is the QR Code app, which will play the song Gnome Pome to the reader after being scanned by a phone. I love the idea of having a traditional published book with technology features. What a fantastic way to combine both mediums.

As a teacher, I can see myself using this book in my classroom to engage my students with all the components. It will be a wonderful tool for teachers to use with its many different features providing a wide range of learning experiences.

In her writing journey, Tracey wasn’t afraid to get readers input and got together a group of the hardest critics—10 children. Tracey came up with a great critiquing system for the children G = Good, B = Boring and DU = Don’t Understand. Some of these children attended the launch.

Her motivation for the writing the book is joy and to try and get kids to read. In all her efforts, Tracey has achieved this and produced a delightful and comprehensive book on gnomes sure to be enjoyed by readers of all ages. Who doesn’t like a little fantasy in their own life? While it’s been a long writing, illustrating and designing road for Tracey, it has definitely been worthwhile.

Tracey Lennon website