By Dongyun Kwon
Local author and artist Lucy Hawkins had a book launch event inviting local students at Your Library Healesville.
The book launch event went successfully with about 150 Grade 5 and 6 students from Healesville Primary School and St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School, including Hawkins’ daughter who goes to St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School.
Hawkins said her book The Salvager’s Quest is about the journey of two Healesville girls to another planet.
“Two sisters from Healesville found another planet called Planet Beatrice and were embroiled in an exciting quest to save endangered animals on the Earth,” she said.
“[The idea was come up with while] I was watching on the news with the massive bushfires of December 2019 and January 2020 and saw many people were losing their homes and billions of animals were dying due to the bushfires.
“I was pregnant with my second daughter and doing lots of bush walks and I was questioning what kind of world I was bringing them into because the pandemic was about to come to our shores, that’s why I decided to write this book.”
The book launch event was run by Your Library Healesville.
Your Library children’s services officer Rose Herring said she wanted to create a big event in the library that could bring local schools together and would be educational, inspirational, fun and free for schools when she began her role as children’s services officer in late 2022.
“In 2023, I collaborated with Kristen Darrell and organised our first schools’ event with 3 schools and over 270 students,” she said.
“The event was such a success and I decided to try to have a school’s event every year.
“So, in October last year when Lucy Hawkins approached me about her new book The Salvagers Quest, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to run another big event with schools.”
All copies of The Salvagers Quest were borrowed on the day at the library and more have been reserved.
“The students loved that the book was written with characters that were from their hometown of Healesville and it was great to be able to support local schools and promote local authors,” Herring said.
After the author’s talk, the library team ran a 35-minute creative writing workshop session where all students from both schools worked together as a group to create character profiles.
Herring said all students participated in the session, sharing their ideas for what their characters look like, their personalities, strengths, weaknesses and superpowers.
“We put the answers to a vote and the most popular answers became the base for the character profile, we used large flip charts to write up the answers so the students could see their ideas, and we sent the profiles to the schools after the event so they could get writing at school,” she said.
“The exercise was hilarious fun, it gave the kids an opportunity to get involved and hopefully inspired to go home or back to school with ideas for stories of their own.
“Kids spent so much time on screens these days and it was wonderful to see them using their imaginations to create wondrous worlds and characters.”
Hawkins said she got inspired by the students.
“They were so wonderful, interested and respectful and they listened and asked questions, they were really on the ball and had amazing perspectives and were so knowledgeable,” she said.
“They were so creative and their ideas were incredible and I hope they were inspired to keep writing if they’ve got a story in them.”
Hawkins takes after her dad who was a journalist and author.
She worked at Cosmopolitan Magazine and The London Paper in the UK as well as newspapers and magazines around the world.
“Working at Cosmopolitan Magazine was an incredible experience at such a young age, but I realised fashion wasn’t really what I was interested in doing,” Hawkins said.
“I left the magazine and I got a job at a film production company and then worked my way up through production to become an art director.”
When Hawkins became 29, she left London and started her journey around the world.
She went to Mexico to teach English and went to Bermuda next.
“I wrote some articles for the newspaper and wrote a play for the theatre [in Bermuda] and then I went to Argentina and I got a job in an extreme sports and wine magazine,” Hawkins said.
“Then I came to Spain where I was a journalist for a few magazines and got a job as a radio presenter and worked for an English language radio station.”
Hawkins now lives in Healesville with her husband and two daughters and is into painting.
“I was so inspired by all the nature around us, so I painted a series of Australian native birds and animals,” she said.
“Now I make my paintings into greeting cards, print on fabric and tea towels and a few shops sell my things.”
Hawkins collaborated with local artist Clare James for the illustration of the book cover.
“I wanted the two girls of the book to be based on my daughters but they were only babies at the time, so I had to imagine what they might look like when they were nine and 12,” she said.
“I drew the girls and the ship, then Clare with her incredible watercolour skills painted it so beautifully.”
Given how popular it seems to be becoming, the author has decided to make it a series of six books.
‘Dream big and work hard for the dream’ is advice to the young generation that the author, who has had lots of experiences all over the world, would like to give.
“If there is something that you want to do with your life, dream big and make it realistic,” Hawkins said.
“We don’t need approval or a million likes to validate ourselves. If it’s something that you love doing, just do it and watch your journey improve.”
