From time to time Andrew receives encouraging comments from school teachers and children about his fantasy trilogy, The Chronicles of Klarin (comprising the novels, With My Knife, Dragonfox and The Red Dragon, all published by Scholastic Australia under the Omnibus Books imprint).

Recently a New Zealand teacher emailed Andrew to say she had been reading the novels to her students. With her permission, her kind letter and the delightful notes from her students are reproduced below:

Dear Andrew Lansdown,

I am a teacher in a small rural school on the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand. There are 22 students in my class aged 8 and 9.

This term I have been reading your trilogy of fantasy novels The Klarin Chronicles, to my class. They are totally captured by them and asked to write to you when they found your website. They want to show you the cardboard box portal we made. It is a very popular quiet place for reading and writing in class time. I have attached a photo. The children all wanted to write too so I have copied their letters below.

Thank you for your inspiration and imagination.

Best wishes

Margaret Gibson (Teacher Room 4 Whenuakite School)

The children’s notes to Andrew follow:

Dear Andrew Lansdown,

Your books are so interesting. The dragonfox is scary but the red dragon looks cool. We made a cardboard box with a triangle opening. Is the circle an opening too?

Yours sincerely Courtney. I am a girl.

 

Dear Mr Lansdown,

I loved your story With my Knife but The Red Dragon is even better. I like the way Yasni is bossy to Colyn.

From Riley

To read the rest of the children’s comments (along with Andrew’s responses), click here.

Andrew’s website was hacked several weeks ago. However, thanks to the work of an expert webmaster, the website has been cleared of viruses and malware and is once again operating as it should. Security on the site has been upgraded, too, reducing the likelihood of another hack. Apologies to anyone who has experienced trouble accessing the site in recent weeks.

Earlier this year Andrew was invited by Poetica Christi Press to judge the press’s annual poetry completion. Andrew completed the judging in early October. His judge’s report contains some helpful observations about the art of poetry writing and is reproduced on this website below:

Poetica Christi Press

 

2016 Annual Poetry Competition

 

Judge’s Report

 

by Andrew Lansdown 

.

I was honoured to be entrusted with the task of judging the Poetica Christi Press 2016 Annual Poetry Competition. There was an excellent response to the Competition, with 190 poems entered. 

 

While the quality of the entries was uneven, many fine poems were submitted. The poems were wide-ranging in subject and theme, touching on family relationships, the natural world, international terrorism, biblical characters, and personal experiences. There were love poems and nature poems, laments and narratives, dramatic monologues and personal lyrics. While the majority of the poems were free form, many included rhyme, and some included regular rhyming couplets or quatrains. It was pleasing to see poets experimenting with some traditional European and Japanese forms: sonnets, villanelles, rondeaux and haiku. While these experiments were not always successful, the poets are to be commended for their endeavours to understand and master the poetic craft. 

 

It was also pleasing to note that most of the poems were cogent and accessible. There were very few poems that were confused or, worse, deliberately ambiguous. 

 

I noticed that two flaws kept recurring and it may be helpful to mention these.

    [continue reading]

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE REPORT