Peter Ball

Peter Ball was born in 1958 in Sydney, one of eight children. He grew up with bedtime stories told by his dad about the adventures of Pea & Bean, characters that were invented to help the kids eat their vegies.

Peter ate his vegies and grew up big and strong and became a Primary School teacher. In no time at all, he was telling his own brand of Pea & Bean stories to his students. Over the years the stories grew, developed and were refined, until there was a whole heap of them! Storytime in Peter's classes were about the best time of day for teacher and students. To this day, when encountering past students, the first question they ask is "Do you still tell Pea & Bean stories?"

These days Peter is working as a specialist LOTE teacher, part-time in Gympie and does some casual relief teaching and writing/storytelling . Peter loves school visits, where he gets the opportunity to introduce Pea & Bean and to explain how the stories became books. He always shares a new story with his audience.

There are three titles in the Pea and Bean series: Rexcellent, Little Lunch and Turbo Mad. The stories revolve around the two characters and their extremely unlikely and largely accidental adventures, outrageous inventions, friendship and a never-say-die attitude to the impossible situations in which they often find themselves! Peter is engaged in trying to get the series made into a cartoon at present.

Peter is now living on a yacht where he is working on a series of mildly scary stories for kids and is also trying his hand at adullt short stories mainly in the Sci-fi / fantasy genre and occasionally writes magazine articles.

Children's Writing Workshop Outline

The central ideas of the workshop are based on the following theories:

1. That if you have good characters with a compelling purpose then you have a story.
2. That written stories are still storytelling, therefore it helps to tell the story first.
3. Children can learn to redraft, edit, redraft and become critical of their own work.

The main teaching / learning goals would be:

• How to develop a strong, believable character central character who is driven by a worthy purpose
• The elements of good storytelling as well as some specific writing strategies for bringing their tale to life and keeping the reader wanting to turn the pages
• The story outline is developed through storytelling and then a brief outline
• The importance of being flexible to change parts of the story that don't work
• The first page of the story is discussed Do's and Don'ts of starting a story and hooking the reader in
• Editing and redrafting by children themselves. At least three to four drafts are recommended. Using computers is encouraged to enable easy redrafting.
• Publish the finished work, making it available to others to read

The sessions can suit up to 60 children but smaller is better.

They can be compressed into 2 x one hour sessions or spread over 4 x forty minute sessions.

About the presenter:

Peter Ball is a storyteller and author of The Adventures of Pea and Bean series of childrens' books as well as being a classroom teacher with over ten years teaching experience.