Salt by Maurice Gee

Review by Nathan Adam (Year 9) as part of the 50 Book Challenge

Hari son of Tarl is left alone, thought to be dead. His father is taken to Deep Salt which is the place nobody returns from. Hari makes a promise to free him, and sets out to do this.  On his journey he meets Tealeaf and Pearl who are very different to him but who he teams up with. They destroy Deep Salt and go to war.

Salt is really exciting, there is lots of action.  The bit I liked the most was when they went into the hill known as Deep Salt and rescue Tarl, Hari's father.

Salt is a great book, it is the first of a series of three and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Book Month Event. Teens Face Writers!

Yesterday afternoon approximately 30 students from secondary schools in Dunedin came to the King's High School Library to meet the authors who were on the author panel last Tuesday.  These students were those who feel a passion for writing and who wanted to hone their writing skills.  They were hand picked by their schools and here you can see photos of them really getting stuck into writing and thinking about writing, trying new techniques and at the same time having a lot of fun. 

Ella West exploring character development and genre

Kyle Mewburn emphasises a point

The authors Vanda Symon, Ella West and Kyle Mewburn had their audience fully engaged and working with all manner of new story types and provided valuable feedback to the students on their writing.  Speaking with the students later they said it was hard to pick which writers workshop they had enjoyed the most because each of the authors had such a different style. This was a Book Month event and we thank the authors very much for their time and their generosity in doing this workshop for our students.