The local visit came before Ms Harry's trip to Castlemaine on Monday to meet with two youngsters who inspired her most recent book, August & Jones.

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The Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) award winning author of The Little Wave, was inspired by the story of two Castlemaine friends - Mathilde Cross and Jarrah Podesta.

Jarrah lost his sight in 2018 as a result of a rare eye cancer retinoblastoma, and Mathilde has been his best friend and guide, helping him navigate school, ever since.

"[The trip] was a great initiative to get authors out to regional areas talking to kids in schools," Ms Harry said.

"I'm really excited to be part of it.

"Then I'm actually on a book tour to promote August & Jones, my new children's novel which came out about two weeks ago."

The trip was an intiative of the Primary English Teaching Association Australia, with funding from the Victorian Education Department, and aims to connect young people to reading and the minds behind the best books.

"There's just this excitement about writing and books and me and finding out more about what I do," Ms Harry said.

"I got the opportunity to meet a young author here called Olive and she has written her own illustrated picture book and she showed it to me, we went through it page by page.

"To encourage a student like her who's talented and say, 'it's possible, keep going with your dream', is great."

Ms Harry said the children in Olive's grade five and six class had also illustrated each page, and was impressed with their passion at such a young age.

Those keen budding writers and illustrators heard from Ms Harry about some of the challenges of the craft and how to overcome them - managing tricky story timelines or moving around segments of the story.

She told the students that she read August & Jones so many times she got a bit sick of it, and said she did at least 20 drafts in the process.

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She walked the class through the research process and also through her experience writing the book during the pandemic while stuck in Singapore.

Meanwhile, the younger students worked with the visiting author on artworks inspired by the beach - a key theme of Ms Harry's next work .

She said, as Book Week is coming up, all the children's authors are out and about, and for Ms Harry, it was great to be able to visit a classroom after such a long period away during the pandemic.

She particularly loved inspiring that next generation of writers, and preparing them for a sometimes tough, but rewarding career.

"This is going to sound harsh, but get used to rejection," she said.

"That will definitely come your way.

"But resilience wins, just keep getting up and trying again, and one day, you might see your book in a bookstore.

"All my books are about kindness and kids who are being brave and facing up to challenges, and that's the main message I want to impart to my young readers."

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