In the words of Early Harvest editors...
St Gerard's student Airin shared her experience of being an editor of Early Harvest 7 on the day of its launch. Here's her experience in her own words.
Hi,I am Airin and as you may know, I am one of the editors for this year's Early Harvest magazine.First of all, many thanks to you all for coming to Early Harvest 7's launch! It is a privilege for me to be standing before you all today.Early Harvest is a magazine filled with lots of wonderful stories and poems, written by many children around Melbourne and edited by 14 young editors.Early Harvest was a great experience as everyone was friendly, had smiles to their faces every day and were easy to get along with.Simon and Lauren were our teachers and through them, we learned a lot of new things.I learned about the editing process, how we had to get in all the submissions, read through hundreds of submissions and then the toughest part, select which stories and poems would get inside the magazine. We, as a team invited in submissions, edited stories, commissioned illustrators and appointed illustrations to each story. I must say we did do a good job.Nearly every day new people came in to talk to us about the different steps to building this awesome magazine. Andrew McDonald came in to talk to us about the marketing process, of what kind of people would be attracted to the magazine and we learned how to market the magazine towards people our age. 100 Story Building designer Reg came to speak about her job, what she had to do for the designing bit, she asked us for our ideas of what designing style we wanted in the magazine and she got it done for us. And Finola, one of the editors for the previous Early Harvest came and helped us with the quizzes and we discussed what questions to put in the quiz.Through the days we had to do quite a lot of discussing and decision making which was a bit challenging but we finally selected the best stories and poems to go inside Early Harvest. There were 150 submissions and only 13 submissions made it - including Morris Gleitzman's.During all the tough times, Lauren gave us fruit and I have to say Lauren gives us the best strawberries ever and Simon has a lot of dance moves up his sleeves. Yes, there were a lot of memories that I enjoyed with the rest of the editors.With all these things happening, I was getting really excited for the end product, our magazine. And finally, today is the day.Early Harvest nurtured new friendships, built fun memories and taught a whole bunch of new things to me and the rest of the editors. I thank Simon and Lauren for supporting and encouraing me. I also thank all the teachers and parents that have put all their effort in to help with Early Harvest 7. And of course, the children who have put together this magazine by entering in their submissions. If it weren't for all of you, I wouldn't be standing on this very stage before all of you. On behalf of my fellow editors, thank you and we hope you enjoy the rest of Early Harvest 7's launch.Early Harvest 7 is an annual fiction book written and edited by children for children. It features 12 young Australian writers and Australian Children's Laureate Morris Gleitzman. Readership: 7+.Buy Early Harvest 7