A MAGIC potion of words and creativity will see a primary school student becoming a published author.
Kiara West was one of more than 7000 pupils to enter the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards and made the final shortlist of 50.
The winning stories and poems are being prepared for publication in a specially illustrated book available from PostShops from September.
Kiara, who attends Sancta Maria Catholic Primary School in Botany, joins Jack and Jenny Im, of Mission Heights Primary School, as the only children from East Manukau among the 50 finalists.
Her winning entry, Leprechaun Ice Cream, is written as a recipe on how to make just that.
Teacher Leonie Agnew says the nine-year-old was overwhelmed when she heard the good news.
“She was in tears when I told her. I knew she had a chance to win, but I didn’t know what the judges would be looking for.”
The young author wrote the bulk of her story during a 50-minute creative writing class.
With the assistance of Ms Agnew, it was shaped and sculpted until the budding author had something she was happy to enter.
In writing her story, Kiara took inspiration from her favourite book, The Paw Thing by Paul Jennings.
“I was very excited and wrote it more for fun than to win,” she says. “I like to write poems too but don’t read much poetry.”
Kiara gives credit to her parents for instilling a love of reading, and the family’s enjoyment of books probably stems from her grandfather, who was a librarian.
She’s up to chapter two of her latest project, a book called My Teacher is a Witch, which Ms Agnew jokes is not biographical.
What makes it even more special is the teacher will soon become a first-time author after having written a children’s book of her own.
For her success, Kiara takes home a $50 voucher and a copy of the book with her story in when it’s published.
Ms Agnew realised Kiara had a way with words when students were asked to describe a sound around the school. She wrote the bell used to signal the end of class sounded like “an old granny walking into a pole”.
