Reading, Writing and Drawing @ The Library

The GS LRC, in coordination with the GS English Department whipped up an author-illustrator visit for the grade 7 students this morning. Fran Ong of Ilaw ng Tahanan Publishing worked it out with us to make the event possible.

Award winning author, teacher, journalist, book reviewer and reading advocate, Neni Sta. Romana-Cruz shared with the boys, her life as a writer, her books and the long and tedious road to publication. Her session was filled with rich stories of more than 40 years of her writing history and personal experiences.

At the same time, illustrator and digital artist Joel Chua, an alumnus of Xavier School (Batch 95), showed samples of his works, digital art works and published books. It was Joel's Home-School Communication Notebook (HSCN) that brought great interest to the boys since he used it as a sketch book/comic book cum school planner. Half of the pages contained school related information, schedules and list of "to do's" The other half were filled with his drawings - panels with drawings in different colors of ink.

If Neni mentioned her diary as starting point to an illustrious writing career, Joel has his HSCN as seed bed for his artistic inclinations. Every person with a dream had to start somewhere. Who knows, one of the students who listened to Neni and Joel this morning may just begin a story or a drawing that could start of something big.

Their sessions were enriched by writing and drawing activities done by the guest author and illustrator with the students.