Books created by Catholic school students for kids with cancer recognised
24 November 2022
Two Catholic schools have emerged as winners of 2022’s Write a Book in a Day competition, organised by The Kids’ Cancer Project which supports childhood cancer research. Ursula Frayne Catholic College Year 10 students gained first place with their composition of ‘Joy’ with St Munchin’s Catholic School Year 5 students runners-up.
Write a Book in a Day is a fun, creative, and collaborative competition for students in years 5 to 12 and adult writing groups. Teams of up to ten have just twelve hours to plan, write, and illustrate a book from start to finish. To make it even more fun, unique parameters must be included in the story. Digital editions of the completed stories are shared with children in hospitals across Australia.
‘Joy’ is about Joyce, a shop owner who collects and sells positive emotions for a living. Every morning, Bennett escorts her to the single train line connecting Ailartsua – the Mood E Express, to remove the negative emotions pervading the country, while replacing them with positive emotions. The contagious effect of negativity spreads throughout the passengers on the train, making the train line spiral out of control. Along the way, Joyce gathers the companionship of a talking ferret and a giant koala, who help her find a way to restore the positivity and save her people from falling into a cycle of fear and anger.
‘The Switch’ tells the tale of two unlikely friends with opposing dreams. Together they find a way to collaborate and help each other achieve their destinies.
“Our book was about finding joy and happiness in even the darkest places. As a group, we wanted to try and create a positive and uplifting theme to try and encourage even just one person to find hope and joy in their life. We wanted to create a unique yet wonderful book that could hopefully be enjoyed by many,” said Ursula Frayne student, Caitlin Crawford.
“From brainstorming and polishing a chaotic mess of ideas into a decent book within twelve hours, to organising our group into sections to divide and conquer the task of writing a book in a day, the event has been a fantastic opportunity. We are all proud to have contributed to such a fantastic cause,” added Wesley West.
“We hope that reading and viewing our novel empowers young people to hope for the best, hold on to every memory, and know that through their battles and stories, they are the inspirational,” said Hannah Toh.
Teacher and Coordinator, Isaac Ramshaw-Attard said the winning team members were adamant that they would develop a book to communicate a message of hope and joy to their audience.
“Their heartfelt consideration of audience, teamwork, problem solving, as well as language and artistic skills, are inspirational and testament to what wonderfully caring and talented young people they are.”
“Winning this prize is momentous for us. Not only do we get the honour of being selected as one among the many deserving teams mentioned, but it also tells us that our message of perseverance and positivity will be spread even further than we anticipated.”
Ursula Frayne Year 10 student, Hannah Toh.
Ursula Frayne raised $1,855 and St Munchin raised $880 for Children’s Cancer Research.
Link to the book ‘Joy’- https://writeabookinaday.com/library/book.php?i=554
Link to the book ‘The Switch’ – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l4_wIuyFgtk5mgB_5hi1Dma1HbbNUqpY/view
