Writing to a Real Author

I am going to post the weeks events as separate posts because we have actually done quite a bit over the last few days. Perhaps because we aren't swimming every day due to chilly mornings, and less than half the class are bringing their togs (and yes I did take them out for a game of long ball instead... once) so we have more time in the classroom.
During a company meeting, Sophie informed the team that her Aunty Chris is a children's book author. We retrieved her books from the school library (Chris Gurney is the author of Little Red and the Cunning Kuri, The Little Blue Duck, Trev and the Kauri Tree...) and read them as a class in the What Is world. We discussed the fact that different illustrators drew the pictures for each book, and how the texts rhymes, and how the stories are based on famous fairy tales but with a modern and NZ theme. The children had lots of questions so I suggested we write to her and ask them. I know we could have just checked her out online, but this was a neat chance to try writing proper formal letters, with correct setting out etc, so they wrote their letters and they are all ready to send as soon as Sophie's mum gets the correct address to post them.
Sophie did bring in her signed copies of the books her Aunty Chris has given her as gifts, and we have read them and enjoyed them all. What was really amazing was that many of the kids in my class did not know the story of the Emperor's New Clothes or The Elves and the Shoemaker, two books that Chris Gurney has based her stories on. So I read the original story of the Emperor's New Clothes, and the class decided the Emperor must have had undies made out of the same invisible cloth as his clothes. Why oh why did I pick that particular book from the school library, when I had four different versions to choose from? I should have checked the illustrations at the end of the book before I read it to them!