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HOST: Over the past year, Huntly College has invited some of the country's most acclaimed writers to share their passions for reading and storytelling with students. Writers who have visited the school include children's writer David Reilly, aka the Reading Warrior, poet, fiction and non-fiction writer Ben Brown, who currently holds the title of Te Awhi Rito New Zealand Reading Ambassador, doctor and poet Glenn Colquhoun and young adult fiction writer Des Hunt.  All of these authors are advocates for the power of reading and imagination in young people's lives. Here's what some students had to say about their visits.

SPEAKER: So David Reilly was - he's an author and he writes a lot of children books about how people succeed and stuff like that. He came to our school and he talked about some life-changing books for other people that we know now that have made it really big. When he was in the school talking about it, it was actually really interesting because it actually got people thinking about reading and acknowledging what they read and wanting to read, instead of leaving it and thinking reading’s boring. So, he actually changed the mindset of a lot of students here. So I really appreciated that he came in and talked about it.

SPEAKER: He was talking about other people's life stories and how they went from not really looking forward to education and not feeling it, to reading books and getting somewhere in life that they never thought that could actually happen due to personal reasons and then actually making it further.

SPEAKER: I think David’s influence on the school was very good because we could relate to him, we could relate to his story and how he portrayed himself to be a reader and a poet. All our friends have been reading ever since. I think I’m really enjoying the comics because I used to hate reading, like I used to really despise it.

SPEAKER: Yeah I never used to read but like lately I’ve been reading a lot. The first day after he came, I read a book in an hour. It was like a poem type of book that was really interesting and since then, I’ve been reading like every night instead of going on my phone to fall asleep.

Me and my friends were inspired to read books every week.

SPEAKER: Ben was really good to listen to, like his poetry, his spoken word poetry was quite good to listen to because of the power he had in his voice. I find it quite amazing to watch spoken - well to hear and watch spoken word poetry because you see the the people who are speaking it, you see how much they're into it and how passionate they are about it, which inspires me and probably many others.

SPEAKER: So he didn't like reading when he was a kid but I think the more that he was like learning new words and the more vocabulary there was in his mind, the more books he could come out with and the more raps that he could like entertain the kids with. He's funny when he's in his gang vibes because he's using like ghetto words but he's making it like interesting for kids to understand and adults. And the stories that he writes, it's not just for like adults or kids, it's just for everyone. When he was doing his rapping, I kind of liked his rhymes, so I just wanted to try read.

SPEAKER: We had Glenn that came into our school and Glenn’s story was about his family and how they got separated and then they connected again and his great grandmother kicked someone out from Scotland and then they connected again and then he started doing poetry and writing. So, while he was talking a bird came into our school hall and started flying around because he was saying something about birds at the time.

SPEAKER: He was saying ‘as I sing this song about Mary ,let her presence be with us,’ and as he was singing the bird came in and started flying around and perching on the rails and it seemed like the bird was dancing to the song as well, so that was pretty cool.

HOST: As part of the new way forward, Huntly College teachers started reading books to tamariki and rangatahi in class. The young people reflected on how adults around them value reading.

SPEAKER: They should show us an example because they should be reading as well, not just us kids, because you can still learn heaps while you're an adult. There's a lot of information in books, it's not just for like kids, for us to learn for our future, even adults can do it and they can even strive more. So for them to help us, they should start reading more as well.

SPEAKER: One teacher would like read a paragraph and it was like a play-ish kind of thing. They would read different characters’ part of the story and we just have to sit back and listen. The story was nice because it had like a lot of genres in it, it was like a drama, a comedy, a romantic all in just one and I could just like - I could read it forever aye.

SPEAKER: Like all the students were like ‘we want more please keep reading,’ and then all the teachers like ‘we wish but we have to get on with other schoolwork’ and we were all like ‘aww’.

SPEAKER: There's some freaky stuff going on in that book and there was like some inappropriate parts of the story but the way that the writer explained it, it was like appropriate for kids to hear it. It could be - they could be doing like the nasty stuff, but they could like say it to us and then it just sounds like it's nice. You could even say it in the church.

HOST: Young people were asked about their views about what could entice young readers to get more into reading. Rangatahi at Huntly College explain what it is they love about reading and why it is important.

SPEAKER: You just zone out and go into your own world in your mind.

SPEAKER: It's like you're stuck in the book. It paints a picture in my mind like I could be reading the book and everything that the words are saying, I can just see it right in front of me, as if I’m like there and just watching everything happen. It calms me down from doing like the bad stuff. I started reading this one book but then it just like kept me like I was addicted to the book and I just kept reading that book every day and then I just got attached to it.

SPEAKER: And like problems in life - some of us have like anxiety or depression - you can just go into a book and just forget all of that and just be in that book and just yeah get lost. There should be like a survey like maybe once, twice, maybe four times a year like once every term, having like a survey seeing what books the children like and see what books could be in the library so then we can issue them out and yeah so then we get to read what we all like.

SPEAKER: The thing about Huntly College that I like is that we do a lot of writing and we're currently doing our speeches but we couldn't be doing our speeches if we didn't know how to learn, and if we didn't know how to read then we won't really get anywhere in the future. We'll just be probably at home on the couch watching TV.

HOST: Bella has benefited from the school's new approach. She speaks about her passion for reading and how workshops hosted at the school taught her about poetry. During these workshops, she wrote an awesome poem that her friends and classmates related to which she recites.

BELLA: Kia ora my name is Bella and I am a mix of Māori, Italian and English. English and Italian from my mum's side, Māori from my dad's side. My whakapapa is Atiawa in Taranaki and Amalfi, Italy. And I am going to be speaking a poem that I have written and it is called ‘Repeat’.

I am always tired no matter how much I sleep. I live in my room in my bed in front of a screen. Sweets and fizzy snuck into my bag not knowing the consequences it had. At the moment I’m still tired thinking about how tired I am. I want to change this cruel, greedy, racist, homophobic world but I don't have the energy. I am grateful for the warmth of my electric blanket as I lay in bed scrolling through social media to see if anyone cares about me. I get out of bed and stare at myself in the small mirror that lay upon my desk. Blank, tired, sleepless nights, homework, repeat. I go head back to bed. Sleep, phone, sleep, stay up, morning, school, happy face, repeat.

I think it was a couple of weeks ago, we were doing a workshop. I didn't really know and I didn't really understand poetry. I didn't know you could write about anything, literally anything, and that workshop helped me understand. It helped me understand that poetry is about expressing yourself, which I liked as well. I wasn't really into poetry, I didn't think about it at all. I just kind of thought of it as some boring old thing that people don't really do anymore but because of the workshops and the people who've come here, it's helped me understand a lot more about poetry. And one of our exercises was to write a poem that relates to you. So I wrote a poem about how I used to stay up and do my homework and talk with friends and play games all night and I didn't get any sleep and I woke up and then I went to school and then I did that again and I think a lot of people can relate to that.

I like graphic novels because it's a mixture of words and pictures, which helps me learn new vocabulary and also at the same time kind of take in different art styles, because I like to draw and paint and everything. I think graphic novels just help me read more and be more encouraged. There's a series called the Babysitters Club. It's a massive series, a massive series that is about these four or five girls who make up a babysitter's club and they're not very popular but they become popular by doing themselves. It's by a lady named Raina and she writes these graphic novels. She has another series called Smile and that's about her life story and I think it was really cool because it was exactly her life and I think it's cool that she was able to tell us that and her readers that. I think it matters to me because learning about new stories helps me open my mind to other things, like not just me, like not myself, just other people and what their stories are.

I also like war stories there's a book I’ve been reading and it's called The Secret Letter. I quite like it because it's romantic and has a lot of action in the words and by reading it, it actually helps me imagine the actual story in real life or in my mind.

I don't think everyone gets the introduction you actually need to be able to get into reading and poetry and writing. That's why I feel very privileged to be here. Maybe a reason why that people aren't really into reading, poetry, writing and all that, maybe is because their parents or their guardians don't really encourage them to. I think like the school need to give free books but also before doing that because if they don't like - if they don't give an introduction like the workshops that wouldn't encourage them to read the free books, which they’d just have random books at home that nobody would read. Reading is very important, so is writing, so is poetry and it's a good thing to learn about and if any schools see this or any anyone sees this get your kids or get younger people into reading because it's good.

HOST: Eric and Tien are senior learners who have discovered the joy of reading. They share their experiences about how reading has influenced them and expanded their world.

ERIC: I like books with movies. Do you guys know the book or movie The Fault in Our Stars? My sister, she goes to university in Otago, that was one of the books that she bought back. There’s two cancer kids and they fall in love with each other. Oh it's just a really nice story but I read the book first and then I watched the movie afterwards and it's so nice to see how it links up together. Because you read the book and you can tell how much more information the book has than the movie. It's really nice. The book was really nice because it just had way more information than a two-hour movie. That's the first proper book that I really got into. I think it's the first book I looked forward to reading, instead of having it as a chore like when you go to school and having to read for the teacher. Yeah and that book that book is just really good because it opened up my vocabulary a lot too. For me, when I had free time, I would always just kick back in the bed and read some of that because I’m a pretty big gamer, I’m a pretty big gamer and that's that's one thing that I used to look forward to more than gaming at the time. And yeah I read that watched the movie yeah but I really never found another book since like that.

TIEN: Yeah I think I owe it to reading who I am today. Over my junior years in primary school, I guess I wasn't the best reader and I wasn't the most confident and that's kind of why I shied away from it a lot and you know I started to grow older, I thought I’d pick up a book one day, started reading and you know I started losing track of time. Next thing I know I was through three or four books and I was like chatting away with my friends about them. Reading was a thing that I could share with my mates. I think it was - as a kid I was quite dramatic growing up when I lived with my grandparents, you know, I wasn't around other kids so often and I think I tended to lash out or act out in an attempt to draw someone's attention. So as a kid I was quite funny, outgoing, loud.

I was like 10 or something and one of my teachers had read a few lines from Shakespeare and I was like yeah that's cool. I think after that when I got into high school, Shakespeare and drama was a class so I took that class for two years but then our second class we had this really good teacher come in. She had done performing arts and stuff for like many years and I think that was like when I first started looking into Shakespeare a lot. My favourite? I want to say Hamlet but we had Ugly Shakespeare Company come in recently and they've performed Romeo and Juliet. The way they performed it I’d say is probably my favourite.

Recently, because I always get tied up doing other stuff like school work, all my assessments and whatnot, I find myself reading less, but it was a good opportunity to you know get into audiobooks. So I think my first audio book was Unbroken with Louis Zamperini. That was about World War II. I hadn't read the book beforehand so I wasn't you know, I didn't know what to expect, but the audiobook was a really good introduction to the book, then I found the book at school here and yeah I just finished reading it. I still listen to Shakespeare now from time to time it can just be soothing, sometimes I’m not even listening to the words properly or even trying to comprehend what they're saying you kind of just want that in the background.

Over lockdown because I was in the transition stage of moving houses, all my schoolwork from my other school got sent to my old house’s address and so I didn't get any work over the holidays ,you know I didn't get access to any technology. So I found myself just reading a lot and with everything going on in the world, I kind of used reading as escape to escape society even more, to like isolate from my self-isolation. But yeah I enjoyed it, like obviously it wasn't good because of Covid but I was productive with the time I had and I believe it changed me in a way. I like to think that I’m more open-minded now.

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