The Book Launch
This event has long been honoured at Valley Park, celebrating the hard work of students in Year 8 through the publication of their short story collections.
Beginning in Year 7, each student plans, writes and edits a story that is then collated with the work of peers in their class. As you’ll see from the anthologies, there are many interpretations of the brief, with a range of characters, genres and plots explored and developed by our imaginative students.
After their class books arrive from America, following publication, the English department hosts an event in the library for governors, staff, students and their families to mark this impressive achievement. Excerpts of stories are read aloud to the audience, awards are handed out and we typically have an author visit to give a talk about their own experiences in the industry.
Molly's review of The Book Launch
For our Book Launch, we went through lots of processing in which I put together, edited and finalised scripts for the evening, and we asked people from each and every Year 8 English class to write and answer questions about our stories and how the stories will help them.
We recorded individual videos of each student answering their questions and then made a compilation of these videos that we presented on the evening.
We invited a guest author who gave an amazing speech to the audience about the books he wrote, and we had gatherings to rehearse, edit and work on scripts, stories and questions, giving each other feedback and supporting each other at lunchtimes.
The Book Launch will definitely give me lots of good experience in the future for hosting, rehearsing and preparing events, and then actually being a big part of the event.
I feel so lucky and honoured to have been a part of this event and I will never forget the amazing evening I had!
