In kindergarten, the young James Foley drew a house on fire. It had a door with a door knob as big as a steering wheel, with a chimney, and it was consumed by purple flames. In Year Two he drew a teddy bears' picnic. ''Hey, Mr Author Man,'' a child once asked him. ''Why did you draw a dancing rubbish bin?"
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''It's a tree,'' Foley corrected. ''Yeah, I know that,'' said the child. ''But why does that bird have its bum on fire?'' The child critic went on to point out further discrepancies: ''Why do the clouds have faces, and this cloud have a face on his face?''
''I booted him,'' Foley deadpans. ''Are you with me?'' And each of the students from Miller and Mount Pritchard East Public schools nodded, fulfilling Foley's grand plan of engagement: run a lesson on the importance of reading, the structure of writing stories and picture books and brainstorm a few story ideas while shaking up the children with some silly voices and a few laughs made at the expense of his own naive childhood drawings.
Foley, the illustrator of My Dead Bunny and author-illustrator of Brobot, and the commercial artist Mulga this week joined children's authors R.A. Spratt and James Roy at Liverpool Library for a series of talks and workshops that will bring 40 authors to six western Sydney libraries.
The two-week roadshow headlines the Sydney Writers' Festival's Children's Festival of Moving Stories, a two month-long program presenting quality literary events for primary and secondary school students. Russ the Bus, a feature of past festivals, has been decked out in new livery courtesy of Shaun Tan, author of The Lost Thing, and its cargo of children's books and authors are off to Camden, Campbelltown, Liverpool and Bankstown before touring regional NSW for the first time.
''It's about making a book a constant companion of a child, certainly that's the thing the Sydney Writers' Festival wants to do,'' says Clare Sawyer, the festival's newly-appointed head of children's programs. ''That the children take books to their heart and that they always remember books are a pathway to their imagination. "
The commercial illustrator, Joel Moore, began his morning workshop with the shout out: "Are you ready to rock? I'm Mulga and I paint stuff." His signature gorilla is a recognisable figure among students – one of his largest commissioned street murals sits 200 metres away in Liverpool's main street.
Mulga never lost the impulse to draw as he got older but didn't think much of his talents. ''I studied economics at uni. I didn't think doing art was such a good career choice." The assistant financial planner is now a full-time artist and author of Mulga's Magical Musical Creatures.
All children are natural artists and storytellers, says Foley, but often lose enthusiasm as they approach their teens.
''I think they become self conscious, Í think they compare themselves. Maybe it's even the education system, once you start getting marked on art. How do you do that? It's not like it is a maths test where there is a wrong answer and a right answer. When that happens it sucks the fun out of creative stuff and then kids stop. Maybe with things like NAPLAN there is too much a focus on spelling and grammatical correctness and straight lines and shapes and geometry and there is not enough of, 'Hey, tell me a story'. 'Tell me a story that can make me laugh or cry'.''
