illustrations | A Day in the Life of a Gourock Primary Pupil

Primary 6 have been hard at work…

We are about to become published authors! Our Book Launch day is planned and we can’t wait to share our successes with a wider audience, including our proud families.

Creating a Character
Someone you can be scared of…
We planned out a descriptive paragraph, identifying this dangerous character. We looked at adjectives and descriptive phrases. We considered what our character might look like, sound like, what they might wear, why they are wicked and what their likes and dislikes could be.

After reading our class novel ‘Street Child’ and finding lots of good similes and metaphors, we decided that one way to make this paragraph really successful would be to include a simile about the eyes. We spoke of the popular saying ‘eyes are the window to the soul’ and thought of different ways to write about a person’s eyes that would suggest that not all was well with them, that they shouldn’t be trusted…

Here are a selection:

Eve – ‘Her eyes were brewing like a storm and a crooked smile was plastered over her face.’

Libby – ‘His eyes were as dark as a cold, winter’s night.’

There’s only one way to really bring a character to life…

CREATE!

After deciding on our character, we concentrated on good story openings. We looked at ways in which authors ‘pull their readers in’ to their story. Our imaginative story had to have two good beginnings as it featured a parallel universe.

Here are just a couple of our wonderful examples:

Illustrations
We’ve been really enjoying our time with our P2 shared reading buddies. Looking at different types of picture books has made us appreciate how valuable an illustration can be to enhance a story. So we set to work…

Editing and Redrafting
We were quick to find out that one of the trickiest things about being an author is perseverance – having the patience to edit and redraft, making the story the very best it could be.

The Blurb
The back of the book description.
The dust-cover copy.
Whatever you call your summary of the story, it’s an important element of your book – everyone needs a blurb!

Dedications
The most special part of this whole experience was deciding who to gift our book to.

Part of the writing process was adding our dedication. We have each chosen a younger child (for some it is a family member, for others a close friend or our reading buddy) and we have written them into our stories as one of the main characters!

We think this personal element will really make our books a gift to treasure and we can’t wait to wrap them and put them under a Christmas tree, ready for opening on Christmas morning!

****BOOK LAUNCH UPDATE ****
What a lovely morning we had! Lots of our families turned up to enjoy a hot cup of tea/coffee and enjoy our books.

After some very confident introductions from a selection of classmates; parents, grandparents, friends and members of Gourock Primary read, appreciated and commented on our fabulous stories!