Teachers / Parents Comments

From the Author:

I greatly appreciate your time providing a little feedback in regards to my visit to your school in order to help better inform other teachers / parents / schools / libraries.

Please feel free to click here in order to drop me a line / comment and I'll pop onto this page asap.

Thankyou again for your continued support and the opportunity to visit with your school / library.

All the best, sincerely .. ​Susan

​Your EMail Address is NOT Published or passed on in any way .. 

​Sarah Allen -  Albury Wodonga Dyslexia Support Group (Find us on Facebook and at http://www.awdsg.weebly.com)

A big thank you to Susan Berran, and of course Fluffbutt, for making us all laugh and showing us how a country kid's crazy stories can be amped up even more to become real live books.

Bucket loads of snot, toxic farts and slimy toe-jam jokes grab kids, even reluctant readers, and takes 'em for a turbo buckin' bronco kind of ride where they never know what's coming next.

The kids especially loved following Susan's step by step instructions on how to draw Fluffbutt... "start by drawing a monkey's bum."

No kid can resist that!

We thoroughly recommend Susan Verran as a speaker, author and illustrator.

Thanks for being so easy-going and generous. 

Vicki Jones

Thank you Susan

It was lovely to have you at the school. The kids are all lining up to borrow your books and the children who didn't attend are asking for them too- the grapevine is alive and well! The group you worked with writing are all so keen they are coming to the library to write. I will make sure we send you some of the stories as they finish.

Your presentation was great fun and has kids talking about books and writing- what more could we want?

Kind regards

Vicki Jones Teacher Librarian Matraville Soldiers' Settlement PS

Vicki Jones Teacher 

Sarah McDonald

My son, Hal, spent lots of wonderful time with you at Sts Peter and Paul school last week. He is so enthused by your inspirational teaching! He traveled to Hay with his father at the weekend and he spent a lot of the time in the truck working on his story (the one he started with you at school). It is so funny; he has taken so much from what he learnt from you and made it his own.

Thank you for being remarkable and making such a profound contribution to children's learning. 

​Pamela Chandler

We loved having you and I think you were very generous with your time, and your books! It was really nice that you allowed the students to come in at lunchtime for a drawing session and that you stayed on for our Book Week assembly. The students in my class were ‘devouring’ the books that you donated to our school!

All of our teachers felt that their students were highly engaged in your sessions and very excited by what you had to say.

My own class were very motivated and desperately wanted to do some writing in the next class session. Most of them followed your advice and started by describing the day and went on to write some very colourful text.

Thank you again for the day.

Kind regards,

Pam

Echuca West VIC 

Julie Holden

We had Susan come to our small school at Chewton Primary.

I loved the way she could talk to our p-2 class and adapt her style to suit the younger children. They really loved watching her draw the characters from the book.

She then worked with the target audience of 3-6 children. They were fully engaged the entire time.

I would fully recommend having Susan visit your school. She is great value for money and passionate about what she does. 

Julie St Thomas Mores PS

Today you visited St Thomas More's Primary in Campbell. I have a boy in year 5 and one in Kindy and both the boys have talked about your visit ever since I picked them up.

You have inspired and challenged them with your writing, your pictures and your stories and I wanted to say thanks.

It is such a joy to hear them so excited. They are both quite gifted children who love to read....people often comment that I have to tell them to stop reading and go to sleep. I think reading is so important for life and they were both very interested in your life story which I also think is important for them to hear.

I want them to follow their dreams and do what they are gifted at .... even if it takes the long way round to get there as it seemed to do with you.

Thank you for giving up your time to inspire so many young people.

We're all looking forward to reading your books....which I have just ordered.

With thanks,

Julie 

Tonya Gladstone

My mother brought a couple of books to me 'Splinterz' and 'Toe Jammd' that had been signed by the author Susan Berran, for my children, she knew how much I enjoyed reading and assumed my kids did too. I thanked her but informed her that my son in particular was not in the slightest bit interested in reading and even doing the reader books given to us by the school was a difficult and unrewarding task; the books sat on bedside tables for a few weeks. One day my 7yo son decided to pick up Splinterz and have a look at it. I heard chuckling from the bedroom and my son wandered out book in hand saying "Mum, listen to this" and reading me an excerpt he found particularly funny. In one hour my son had read 34 pages of Splinterz with more fluency, meaning and interest than he has shown in any school reader.

In one hour Susan Berran has changed my son's whole outlook on reading - he loves it now! I can't thank her enough for writing witty and engaging stories that all children would enjoy reading.

I'm sure a lot of my son's enthusiasm comes from all the 'risque' words like poop and bull crap! He kept on chuckling and telling us how funny it was when Sam suggested they throw a battery in after the bulb and when it caught up,the bulb would glow and they could watch where it went.

He loves the fact that there is more than one story going on in the book, something that seems to be lacking in many school readers aimed at 7 year olds.

I adore reading, and was resigning myself to the fact that my son would never get the same joy from reading I do, until we found Splinterz. Thank you very much.

I hope that as part of your PR campaign you approach Caulfield Grammar School and visit them as they are always happy to have authors come to the school and inspire more children to read and enjoy it. I've gone blank and can't think of all the things I wanted to say in praise of these books and their author, so I guess this will have to do! THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU.

Just thought of something else I thought I must share with you. Charlie now comes home and says "I'm going to read" he no longer wants to play the Xbox or computer games or Wii he just wants to read Splinterz. He'll be finished the book by the end of this week so Susan better write like crazy so she can publish more books for my son to read.

Kind Regards Tonya Gladstone 

Caroline Love

It was a pleasure to have you in our school Susan.

The children loved your vitality and passion.

Take care and happy writing,

Caroline Lovel & staff and children at St. Augustine's

St Augustine's Maryborough VIC 

Lisa Zanker

We were fortunate to have Susan Berran visit our school last week. She worked with students from Prep to Year 7 throughout the day and was wonderful with all students.

Her storytelling ability and warm personality engaged students from the outset. They enjoyed listening to her life stories as well as hearing her read from her Freaky series of novels. The students loved her illustrations and have been inspired to create some of their own weird and wacky characters and to write some gross stories since her visit.

It was a pleasure having Susan visit our school and I would thoroughly recommend her to anyone else considering an author visit. 

​Andrea DeCarvalho

Susan came to our school again this year and the students had a ball - again! She worked extremely hard as a writer-in-residence over three days on a project directly related to our school’s NAPLAN results. We held a Father & Son evening, writers’ workshops for boys and readings under the trees for girls. Her communication, organization and interest in our requirements were second-to-none. Parents have not stopped remarking what a positive impact Susan’s work has made on their children. The students are now very enthusiastic to take part in a Short Story Competition which will capitalize on all Susan’s efforts. A visit from Susan is highly recommended! 

Jennifer Rundle

Hi Susan,

A big thank you from all of us at CGPS

The students and staff alike all loved your sessions and are still talking about it

You are indeed very inspirational and its lovely to listen to such a passionate author/illustrator. 

Christina Talbot

Hi Susan,

I would just like to send you a big thank you for visiting Courtenay Gardens Primary School. The children thoroughly enjoyed your very funny stories and illustrations. Fluff Butt is now a big hit at our school and in demand to be borrowed. We wish you much success in the future with your books.

Kind regards

Christina

Library 

Rebecca Perston

I had a student in my class who I was having a lot of trouble engaging in his learning. When he approached me asking if I could read a book called Splinterz to the class, I quickly agreed, hoping that reading the book would help make him excited about learning and reading. It worked. He would sit on the floor laughing at the adventures Sam and Jared got up to.

This year I decided to read Splinterz again to my new class of Year 5 students. They were enthralled and completely taken by surprise by the twist at the ending. They loved Splinterz so much that they begged me to read Toe Jamm’d too. Off I went to the book store that night to purchase a copy. I started reading it to them the next day. Every single student in my class loved Toe Jamm’d, especially the gross humour! One student in particular would become so excited as I started reading he would start bouncing around on the floor in anticipation of the next funny AND disgusting situation the characters would find themselves in.

I also believe that the language helped to draw them in to the books and allowed them to experience a genre that is not usually read in the classroom.

I strongly recommend Susan Berran’s books.

My class is now desperately waiting for the next book to hit the bookshelves! 

Teacher .. Wodonga PS

Alan Bowater

"These are absolutely fantastic! Well constructed and so amazingly humorous, I'm still chuckling over many of the situations the boys found themselves in. And the domino effect of destruction was just brilliant!

Susan has a great and unique style which I can see kids would love."

Alan Bowater .. Author & Teacher of the A pig called Pete series 

Mattie Dragonetti

It was with great pleasure that we welcomed Susan Berran to St. Damian’s Primary School in Bundoora on the 20th and 21st of August. Susan was invited along to present her books (Freaky series) and talk to our year 3-6 students about her experiences of being an author as part of our Book week and Literacy and Numeracy week celebrations.

Susan totally engaged all of our students with not only the reading of parts of her books but by her extremely useful tips for writing. I was totally amazed at the quality of writing that students were able to produce in the afternoon workshop just by following some of Susan’s special ‘tricks of the trade’. She certainly inspired many of our students to continue their writing skills and become potential authors themselves. The teachers were also amazed at the enthusiasm shown by students. Even though Susan is not a teacher, some of our teachers have adopted some of her ideas within their writing lessons.

Susan we would welcome you back any day in the future and perhaps we can show you some of the talented work that has been produced since your inspirational visit.

Thoroughly recommend Susan Berran to inspire and stimulate the reading and writing skills of students

Mattie Dragonetti .. Literacy Leader St Damians Bundoora