Children's author Falkner one to watch

Your average book launch is a perfectly pleasant affair, but "electrifying" is not a word you'd use to describe it. This is because your average book launch doesn't kick off with an astonishingly loud 500,000-volt indoor lightning storm. New Zealand children's author Brian Falkner has just brought out his third book, and it's fair to say it arrived with a bang.

Falkner first appeared on the local writing scene three years ago, and has quickly established himself as someone to watch. The main reason for this is good old fashioned story-telling ability — his books appeal to girls and boys across a wide age-range — but once you've seen him in action in front of a crowd, it becomes obvious that good old-fashioned showmanship has played a role as well. Falkner spends a lot of time visiting schools and encouraging kids to read, and knows how to get their attention.

These visits are fun, Falkner says, but he doesn't take them lightly.

Getting kids reading is one of his greatest enthusiasms. "I did my first-ever school visit because a teacher invited me to, but it was actually the second one that brought things into focus for me."

That second time, the request came not from a teacher, but from one of the pupils, who phoned up out of the blue and said please, please, please would Falkner come to his school?

"And I said you'll have to OK this with your teachers, and he did, so of course I said yes. It was only when I got to the school that I got the full story. It seems this boy had been an extremely reluctant reader. The only thing they could get him to read in school were rugby league magazines, because he was a huge fan of the Warriors."

So, as it happens, is Falkner. His first book, Henry and the Flea, is the story of a 12-year-old boy who can move faster than the eye can follow, and who uses his special power to become the youngest-ever player for the Warriors.

The book is an engaging mix of wish-fulfilment fantasy, coming-of-age story, and ripping yarn, and it also has the key quality — given its target audience — of being very short without seeming rushed or compressed. Enthusiastic readers can power through it and not feel short-changed, yet unconfident ones can approach it without feeling overwhelmed.

Falkner's call from the former reluctant reader came about after an enterprising teacher suggested that Henry and the Flea might be a good book for a boy who liked rugby league magazines.

"Three or four weeks later when the school library asked for it back, they couldn't get the book off him. When I visited the school, I made a special presentation to that boy, and that was the moment the world changed for me. Every time I go into a school now, I think, if my passion for reading and writing inspires just one kid, I've really achieved something."

Passion is a key word for Falkner. His writing career was sparked off while waiting for a Warriors/Broncos game to begin some years ago, when the friend he was going with turned to him and asked, "Brian, what's your passion?"

"I didn't have an answer for him. But I thought about it afterwards, and I remembered how when I was 8 years old I used to dream about becoming a writer. And because of that one question, I sat down and started learning about writing, and as a result ..."

As a result, Falkner went out a few weeks ago and hired a portable lightning generator, because it was time to launch his third book, and kids respond well to spectacle. The large crowd who turned up to the launch of Super Freak — another tale of a young boy with a special power, hard choices to make, and some growing up to do — was roughly half made up of early teens and pre-teens. Watching Falkner work with them was an education.

How do you make a book launch fun for kids? You give them competitions. Write a limerick starting with this line! Re-write Cinderella in the style of Valley Girl! I need six people to do a blind taste test on 10 different types of cola — the contestants will be the people who can answer these trivia questions about my books, and the winner will get to be a character in my next one!

All of which would be so much window-dressing if the book being launched were no good. But Falkner has the real storyteller's gift. My 9-year-old son tried out one of his books for me last week. The verdict: "Can I have his other ones now?"