JK Rowling, FaBostory and the kids of Maungawhau

Kids at Auckland’s Maungawhau school are so enthused about a New Zealand online writing project that they’ve invited JK Rowling to join. In 2010 a group of New Zealand children's writers had a conversation on Facebook about writing an online junior fiction book, one chapter following another and inviting New Zealand children to join in. FaBoStory was born and a wild and wacky ride it was. Each week a new chapter from one of the team went up online as well as a winning chapter submitted from New Zealand students.  

This year the FaBo Story Team have changed the format and are being inundated by entries and enthusiasm! From Queenstown to Auckland, kids across New Zealand have been reading and entering the FaBostory project and think their kiwi writers are so good JK Rowling would be lucky to be involved.

This year’s format sets a new genre, setting and inhabitant of Planet Fabo each week. One of the eight professional New Zealand writers submits a story and judges entries from kids, picking a winner each week.

A teacher from one of FaBostory’s participating schools enthuses: “Oh my goodness Maungawhau School is FaBo obsessed! All the senior classes and most of the middle school are doing it for writing now and hopefully they will all enter.  My breaktime FaBo group has stopped because they are all doing it in class.  ...  I have never seen the staff so excited about writing! ...One of our teachers told me that her son could never write more than a page for writing and it is a real struggle.  And last night he told her he had started a mystery about Sher Lock [a FABOstory character] and he was going to finish it by the end of the week. His teacher said he has already written 3 pages which is unheard of.”

To enter check weekly details on fabostory2.blogspot.com  This year’s authors include Kyle Mewburn, Brian Falkner, Elena de Roo, Melinda Szymanik, Maureen Crisp, Tania Hutley, Kathy White and Michele Powles.

Stories should be up to 1000 words long and submitted by Friday 5pm in the body of an email to fabostory@gmail.com  with name, age and school.
Work can be submitted as part of a school project or as an individual.
The best student's story is published on the FaBo Story Blog each week alongside a story from one of the FaBo Team writing to the same challenge.
There are prizes and geographical features on Planet FaBo2 named after the winning writers.