How to Make a Movie in 12 Days

Fiona Hardy's How to Make a Movie in 12 Days is a funny, warm story for 9 year olds about an eleven-year-old director with a new camera, a small crew and one summer holiday.

What happens

Hayley has always known she wants to make films. Rosebud is the one she planned with her grandma, a horror film about an evil rosebush with Grandma in the starring role.

Then Grandma died.

On New Year's morning, Hayley's little sister wakes her by sitting on her chest. There's a note. It leads to another, and another, each one a line from one of Grandma's favourite films. At the end of the trail, in the garden shed, is a brand-new video camera.

Is there a better start to a summer than that? (Hayley cries, and you might too.)

So she rounds up her crew. Pilar is producer. Samson makes the props and holds the boom mic. Henry is assistant director and very good at calming everyone down.

It doesn't go smoothly. Five-year-old Jennifer keeps wandering into shot. Big brother Lucas crunches an apple through a take. Pilar isn't at all sure she wants to act. The early chapters even open with scene headings like a real film script, which is a fun touch.

Hayley is bossy and brilliant, and a bit of a nightmare to her friends when the pressure's on (she knows it, too). You're right inside her head, which is very funny and sometimes quite sad.

Grandma is everywhere in the book, in the notes, the camera and the empty lead role. It's all handled gently and with lots of laughs, but a child who has lost a grandparent may find it tender in both directions.

It's Australian, so the holidays land in summer, there's cricket in the street and everyone eats icy poles. A few words may be new (kinder, op shops), which is half the fun.

If your reader is always putting on shows or filming their toys, they'll see a lot of themselves in Hayley.

What to read next

For another girl who can't stop making films, try The Real Z. Z shoots stop-motion videos with her dolls in her bedroom, and her best friend builds the props out of newspaper and sticky notes.