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The Untangled Tales website is the best  of the Summer Reading sites. Going over the site, was like being in one of the famous ‘But WAIT, there’s more!’ advertisements! At every click of the mouse, there was more! There is something here for children of all ages [preschool, primary, secondary], for their parents, teachers and librarians. The site is gorgeous [literally] to look at, easy to navigate, entertaining in content and layout and engagingly informative!

The Celebrity Corner  questions brought out the creative quirkiness of authors and illustrators in a very entertaining way and featured a very diverse group of creatives!

The Untangled Tales game is a blast – great fun! It challenges memory and  prods research capabilities and informs about other cultures, their customs and attitudes as reflected in their  fairytales and legends.

Check out the  side tabs and their drop down menus – there is heaps and heaps of  fun activity, fantastic tales, playful poetry and fanciful stories, arty opportunities, creative competitions in writing and art activities and painless learning along the way!!

Parramatta High School’s hall was filled with students, teachers and kids from other schools, authors – Paul Collins, Meredith Costain, Oliver Phommavanh, Toni Brisland, Wendy Fitzgerald, Lindy Batchelor, Wendy Orr.

Judith Ridge, recognised as one of Australia’s leading authorities on youth literature, wrote the foreward for ‘Trust me Too’ – 58 reasons to celebrate reading by some of Australia’s best loved authors and illustrators.

Wendy Orr read from her moving story ‘The Snake Singer’

Meredith Costain read her wonderful poem ‘Shoefitti’ illustrated by Grant Gittus.

It includes an Obernewtyn novelette by the interntaional best selling fantasy author Isobelle Carmody.

Everyone can dip into this anthology and discover laughs, tears, meaning, fantasy, imagination and more.

A National Year of Reading 2012 event.

Today Wendy Orr, author of many beautifully written and powerful children’s and YA books, including Nim’s Island (with a strong-girl hero, a book that was so popular it was made into a movie starring Jodie Foster); Peeling the Onion (one of my personal favorites); Missing! A Cat Called Buster; and many others, is going to talk with us today about her newest book Facing the Mountain. Wendy is one of my favorite authors and people. Take it away, Wendy!

A story’s origins often start long, long before the idea that builds into a book. On the week that Facing the Mountain is released, I’m puzzling out where the story and characters came from.

Was it the summer I was eight and fell in love with the Rockies at Camp Kananaskis, in Alberta? Or when my family moved from Red Deer, to Colorado, and my dad, younger sister and I climbed Pikes Peak? Or sleeping out in the woods north of Lillooet, BC, and hearing that a grizzly had taken a camper the week before?

The truth is that too many threads go into one book to tease them all out. Some are simple and obvious: climbing a 4000m mountain, no matter how safe and near civilization, felt like a huge adventure and accomplishment. But it wasn’t the pride I started with: it was the panic of the sudden breathlessness at about 3000m. I thought that would happen to the main character, Raven, too – but when I wrote it, it was the older sister, Lily, who hit the oxygen wall.

I also thought Raven would love the mountains as I did – but the more I wrote, the more I saw that she wasn’t me, and she certainly didn’t love mountains. How could she? Her mother has remarried: Raven has been uprooted from the only home she’s ever known and the prairie town she’s always lived in. The mountains, and especially the rockfall, are a symbol of everything that’s changing in her life. Of course I didn’t see the symbolism while I was writing; that comes later. I simply thought that she didn’t like the claustrophobic feeling of trees and mountains, just like my Red Deer friend Gay, who spent two weeks with my family on Vancouver Island and loathed the closeness of the tall trees around the cabin. (In fact Raven’s personality i

Young men in navy shirts strode into the Queensland State Library auditorium singing – it made your heart soar – the power and the beauty – the words of one country, one people Australia.

It was inspiring.

Rachel Nolan Minister for The Arts gave a heart warming welcome.

Anne Prachett winner of the Orange Prize on ‘What Now? held the audience with the power of resilience.

However Shane Koyczan an award winning USA performance poet made the audfience laugh and cry and demand social justice.

Heaps of people were at the opening from Susan Hayes Director of the Australia Council, authors Wendy Orr, Sue Gough, Sally Rippin, Sue Whiting, publishers, journalists, so many from the Arts Community, writers, illustrators from overseas and Australia – what a night.

Loved it – loved it all!!!!!!

Congratulations to Jane O’Hara Festival Director!!!!!!