The Visit of Ella West

Yesterday, the 9th of September, Ella West finally came to our school. The year 7 and 8's went to the auditorium to meet and welcome Ella West to our school. 

Ella West talked about a lot of stuff. We also asked her questions relating to her books and her life. She told us about her first book "Thieves", her book series, and how the cover of the books were bad. 

She got inspired by a documentary she watched about a disorder, XP (xeroderma pigmentosum), a real life disorder. That's how Viola's character was created, in the story, Viola has XP. XP disorder is when you get skin cancer when your skin gets hit by the UV rays but is okay when it's fluorescent.

The awards she's won 

• Louis Johnson/Creative New Zealand Bursary for New Writers 2006.
• University of Otago College of Education Creative New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence 2010
• Winner, LIANZA Children's Book Awards 2015 (Young Adult Fiction) for Night Vision
• Winner, YA Children's Choice Award, 2015 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults for Night Vision

Unfortunately, she couldn't get to New Zealand's top booksellers because her book was published in Australia even though her book was set in New Zealand. 

She told us about her mum thinking that she's all the mum in the stories of her books and also the dad.

One of the students in our class asked her if she had a backup career, her answer was a "Journalist", she works at Southland Times forming magazines. 


A student asked her if being an author was her dream, she said it was her dream, she loved reading and writing. 


Facts about her: Her first book was published 39

She's currently writing a book called "Sound of My Heart", it's about a girl running and she can her heart beating fast. Ella didn't really tell us much about the book. But she said it'll take two years for it to be published.

She told us about writing about a thousand words per day and she tries to reach her goal, writing fifty-thousand in her books. Rainfall has fifty-thousand words and Night Vision has forty-thousand words. 

Another fact: Ella West isn't her real name, it's Karen Trebilcock
She talked about having two lives, Ella West, as an author, Karen Trebilcock, as a mum.

Her book, Night Vision was translated to Italian, called, "L'arte ingannevole gufo", the gufo means owl, since there's an owl in the story.

She talked about how she got her inspiration writing Night Vision, it was when she watched a 60 minutes documentary on kids with the XP disorder and she started thinking What could happen if a kid only goes out at night?


She talked about the dog in her book "Night Vision", "Jim" was her dog in realy life. Jim was her very first farm dog and she said that her dog has two different coloured eyes,
one was blue while the other one is brown - Heterochromia. 

She also talked about watching movies, like Star Wars and Harry Potter, how the lives of the main characters have changed, for example, Luke Skywalker, he used to be a farm boy and now he's a guy who saved the galaxy/universe. Harry Potter, he was just an average-ordinary boy and then he fought Lord Voldermort and as well as the main character in Narnia. She got ideas from those movies to write her books.

Our reading group, Kakapo, the group reading Night Vision, had alone time with Ella and we discussed the ending of Night Vision, she told us the explanations of why she ended it that way.

Reading - Ella West

What I felt

I felt delighted because she replied on my comment on her blog. I really appreciated that she took the time to read my whole comment and replied to it. While I was writing my comment, I had a lot of questions in mind that I wanted her to answer and she did. I felt even more overjoyed when I heard about the news, Ella West is coming to our school to meet the year 7 and 8 block; our class; our reading group, our teacher, us. 

To add to that, it’s actually my first time meeting an author. All of these wouldn’t have happened if learn, create, share hadn’t existed, I’m glad it did because back in the old days, there weren’t technologies to help people to connect from one another. With technologies today, it's easier to connect with people all over the world apart from writing letters.

Night Vision By Ella West - Book Review

Impression about the front cover of the book: It’s something dark, I think that it’s about a girl who’s running away from dark forces.

The blurb on the back, does it interests me or not? It interests me because I don’t think that I've seen or read a book like Night Vision before, it sounds interesting because Viola’s on the run, she has to survive in order to keep their family’s beloved farm.  And it also says that she uses a night vision goggles which is even better and more exciting. 

I read a page and what I find really interesting is that she encountered something that she shouldn't have seen, a crime scene, it’s also interesting and intriguing because she was wearing a night vision goggles that are really impossible to buy and she doesn’t know where and how her parents got it for her as a birthday present.

My predictions before reading - I predicted the book will be about a girl who encountered a crime scene with her night vision goggles (a goggle that is impossible to buy, a goggle that her parents got for her birthday) and that she is a witness.

The theme: Even keeping quiet can get you in trouble, Viola could’ve told the police about what the killer did because she’s a witness but her family and having a peaceful life will be at stake. But when she did keep quiet it, it’d still be the same, what the killer did would bug her, since no one knows what actually happen - George can still kill her without anyone knowing because no one knows that Viola saw him and that she knows everything that had happened, no one knows. That it’s better to stay away from trouble.

My ranking, why I gave it that ranking and what could be improved

I give the book a 3 out of 5 

The way she wrote the book was great but there were a lot of questions that have not been answered yet and it’s kind of a bummer because it leaves you hanging and the ending was not I expected it to be, there were a lot of intense events especially with the ending part, but then something unexpected happened and the ending wasn’t really my cup of tea.

Waitangi Day

On Tuesday, we started to get to know Waitangi Day, some people don't celebrate it, probably because they don't know Waitangi Day or they haven't been in New Zealand for so long or They don't really know much about New Zealand's holiday and its history or they don't celebrate it because they don't want to. 

What happened when people celebrate Waitangi Day? Well, I don't really know much about that because people have different opinions about Waitangi Day and the way they celebrate it. But based on what I read on an article that I chose about Waitangi Day is that Waitangi Day celebrations haven't been that peaceful, because of people, they protest and conflict about the Treaty of Waitangi, the article didn't say why they conflict but it was like an explanation why people protests although it's not enough. It says that it's because of the complex nature of the original treaty discussions that the New Zealand Wars followed, and the way people view the relevance of the treaty for the New Zealand Today. 

Why did Waitangi Day happen?  Waitangi Day celebrations happen because it reflects a significant day in New Zealand history. 

When does Waitangi Day happen? It happens or celebrated on the 6th of February.

How it happened? It happened when the British people and Maori's come together.

Where it happened? in, of course, New Zealand but some people go to churched, whares or to Waitangi to celebrate or they go to a restaurant but most people celebrate it at home.

I've worked on answering the questions that are related to Waitangi Day and remembering, understanding, applying and analyzing. 

I've learnt so much about Waitangi Day, how it all came together like how, when where, what, why Waitangi Day is celebrated until today, and its history.

What do I feel about this? I feel really great because I've learnt so much about Waitangi Day and I got to know more about the New Zealand history.

The Map of European (Europe - History)

I just started this google drawing and I finished it without hesitating.
It was fun learning about histories of different countries. My group is Number the Stars in reading and we are learning about the history of World War 2 in Europe.
Here's the google drawing.
These are some of countries in Europe....

Help Me...Please?

I haven't done reading the "Number the Stars" book but I have a little bit of information about the  characters.

I've been working and focusing on my character traits, putting information about the characters, what do you think they look like.

What I want is feedback the can help and improve my learning about what the characters look like, what they did on the story, what they do for living.

The character setting is in Copenhagen, Denmark in September 1943, so Annemarie Johansen is Danish, her bestfriends Ellen is Jewish.

Adolf Hitler thinks that Jewish people are bad, I really want to ask him a question, too bad he's dead, so here's my question...What did the Jewish people do to him to make him think that Jewish people are bad? Is it because they're in different religion? Is it because they believe differently from German people?

I'm really curious about the ending but I don't want to spoil it so I have to keep reading it.

Here's is one of the characters, Her name is Annemarie Johansen, the information is written, I don't know if I want more information about her but I just need a feedback because it really helps me to improve my learning.

She is a Danish, she has two sister named Lise and Kirstin, Lise died because of a car accident  when she was 18 (she would have been 20 in 1943)\

Annemarie is Blonde, she’s also ten years old like Ellen Rozen.

Annemarie and Ellen was brave and strong enough to hid from the German soldiers. It’s hard for them to hid because they’re only 10 years old.

She’s Ellen’s bestfriend.

Among The Hidden Comic Strip

W.A.L.T retell the most important part of a novel to date.
I've been doing this comic strip about Among The Hidden for 5 days and finally I have finished it.

There are 4 pages on the comic strip.
What I've did in my comic strip is that I have drawn the main characters of Among the Hidden and colouring it to make it look colourful, and I have put some speech bubbles.
The book really helped me a lot because by reading it, it made me fell like I was in the story.

Among The Hidden is about a boy who is stuck in a house forever because in this story there's only 2 children allowed and Luke is the 3rd child. If they let Luke outside or in public and if people saw him or the Government, there will be a punishment, you either get fined, arrested or kids taken away or killed. This story is like the China law too.
What I've done well is drawing the characters, I know it's not perfect but It'll work.
My next step is that I'm going to make it more dimensional.

Enjoy!.

THE END

Hope you all like it!....

W.A.L.T DLO about history of ANZAC day

W.A.L.T history of Anzac day, asking questions, searching information for our poster/DLO, and looking for our answers to our questions,
(poster/DLO)

Hello peeps!.  I've put here a video about our poster.

we've collect some information to put in our poster.

We put our big and sub question on our poster and put the answer on our big and sub questions.

We've been doing this almost 2 weeks.

My group are called "the girls group".

 The people on my group are Lhysette, Jolly-rose, and Jhrnylle.

my nest step is being more creative than a poster or slideshow or etc.

What I did well is doing the crafts and the posters and the questions.

HOPE YOU LIKE IT, ENJOY!