Talent Quest Read online

  This EPUB edition published 2013

  First published in 2006 by

  MACMILLAN EDUCATION AUSTRALIA PTY LTD

  15–19 Claremont Street, South Yarra 3141

  Visit our Web site at www.macmillan.com.au or go directly to www.macmillanlibrary.com.au

  Associated companies and representatives throughout the world.

  Copyright © Felice Arena, Phil Kettle and Shey Kettle 2006

  All rights reserved.

  This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Talent quest.

  ISBN 978 1 4586 4703 0 (EPUB)

  Series created by Felice Arena and Phil Kettle

  Project management by Limelight Press Pty Ltd

  Cover and text design by Lore Foye

  Illustrations by Meredith Thomas

  Visit www.macmillan.com.au/primary to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find subject catalogues, teacher support material and news of professional development events.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  The Newsletter

  CHAPTER 2

  Let’s Do It!

  CHAPTER 3

  Practice Makes Perfect

  CHAPTER 4

  What Next?

  CHAPTER 5

  Surprise Act

  EXTRA STUFF

  Talent Quest Lingo

  Talent Quest Must-dos

  Talent Quest Instant Info

  Think Tank

  Hey Girls! (Author Letter)

  When We Were Kids

  What a Laugh!

  CHAPTER 1

  The Newsletter

  Carly and Mai are sitting in Mai’s lounge room after school.

  Mai “Did you see the school newsletter? The fete’s coming up soon.”

  Carly “And we know what that means, the Annual Primary School Talent Quest!”

  Mai “Yeah, where you get to perform in front of everyone and make a real idiot of yourself.”

  Carly “First prize is free dance lessons for a year. That’d be cool.”

  Mai “Yeah, totally. Let’s enter—ya never know, we might just win.”

  Carly “Maybe I could do some hip-hop poetry or something?”

  Mai “Or sing. And I could do gym stuff like flips or cartwheels.”

  Carly “I’d win if it were netball or surfing.”

  Mai “Yeah, or fast food eating!”

  The girls keep thinking.

  Carly “If we put our great talent and great minds together, then we could come up with something that would really rock, and we’d win for sure.”

  Mai “But seriously, what could we do?”

  Carly “I’ve got an idea. Do you still have your nun’s outfit from that fancy dress party we went to last year?”

  Mai “Yeah. Do you want to do something as nuns? That sounds a bit lame.”

  Carly “No, it wouldn’t be. Did you ever see ‘Sister Act’? The songs and dancing in that film were unreal. We could use some of the music from it and make up a dance routine.”

  Mai “Hey yeah! Good thinking. We’ll need to work out a really cool version, but it could be totally brilliant.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Let’s Do It!

  The girls create their dance, using ribbons and tambourines. After hours of practice, they are ready.

  Carly “I think we’ve got it.”

  Mai “Let’s try the part with the star jumps one more time.”

  Carly “Okay. After three—one, two…”

  The girls repeat the star jump sequence.

  Mai “We’re so good! If we win, I hope we get to choose the dance lessons we want.”

  Carly “What sort of dancing would you learn? I’d like to do ballet so I could pick the other dancers up and spin them around.”

  Mai “You only get to do that if you’re the boy. And you need to be really strong.”

  Carly “Well, I don’t want any boy picking me up and spinning me above his head. Maybe I’ll give ballet a miss.”

  Mai “I’d rather be a tap dancer. You can make a lot of noise when you tap dance. Let’s do that.”

  Carly “Okay, sounds cool.”

  Mai climbs on the coffee table and pretends to tap dance. Carly climbs up and joins in, just as their brothers walk in. The boys watch for a minute, then burst out laughing.

  Mai “Get lost, you two. I bet you couldn’t do any better.”

  Mai picks up a cushion and throws it at the boys as they disappear out of the room.

  Carly “Huh! Those boys will be in for a surprise when they see us dance on Saturday … and win.”

  Mai “We’re so good we might even have our own television show.”

  Carly “How cool would that be—The Carly and Mai Show!”

  Mai “Our act will rock. I hope we win first prize.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Practice Makes Perfect

  The day of the talent quest arrives. The girls are walking to school together.

  Mai “I feel like my stomach is full of butterflies.”

  Carly “I was so nervous I could barely eat my breakfast.”

  Mai “Wow! You must be nervous. You can usually eat all day.”

  Carly and Mai arrive at school. They go straight to the change room to get ready. They wait behind the curtain.

  Mai “Carly, I don’t think I can do this. Look at everyone else. They all look like real pros.”

  The girls peek out to see the crowd waiting for the show to begin. Their brothers are in the front row.

  Carly “Look at us. We look like penguins.”

  Mai “I don’t think I want to do this anymore.”

  Carly “Let’s get outta here! Quick, we can use the back door.”

  Just then there is an announcement: “Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls, our first contestants today are … Carly and Mai performing The Dancing Nuns.” The crowd starts to cheer.

  Carly “Too late to back out now.”

  The girls look at the stairs that lead onto the stage.

  Carly “You go first.”

  Mai “No, you go.”

  Carly “Just go, you’re nearest.”

  As they walk up the stairs and onto the stage, Carly trips. She drops her tambourine and her foot goes straight through the centre of it.

  Mai “Oh no! You all right?”

  Carly “Yeah, but…”

  The music begins. Mai starts tapping the tambourine on her hip but Carly doesn’t know what to do—her tambourine is still stuck on her foot.

  CHAPTER 4

  What Next?

  Carly turns to face Mai and puts her foot up in the air.

  Carly (whispering) “Pull it off.”

  Mai grabs the tambourine and starts to pull. The tambourine flies up in the air and both girls fall backwards, landing on their backs.

  Mai (whispering) “I think I’m gonna die.”

  Carly (whispering back) “I know. We’ll never be able to show our faces at school again. This is so embarrassing.”

  By now, the crowd is laughing. The girls’ brothers are out of their chairs, rolling around on the ground in hysterics. The girls look at each other and stand up.

  Carly “What’ll we do now? The dance’ll never work without the tambourine.”

  Mai “Let’s sing a song.”

  Carly “What can we sing? We haven’t practised any songs.”

  Mai “We could try the theme song from ‘Sister Act’.”
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  Carly “Okay.”

  The girls start to sing.

  Mai and Carly “I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go.”

  Carly (whispering) “What comes next?”

  Mai “I’m not sure.”

  Carly “Listen! The crowd’s singing along. They know the words better than us. Let’s just sing with them.”

  Mai “Wow! Everyone’s singing with us now!”

  As the singing finishes, the crowd cheers—even the girls’ brothers. Carly and Mai take a bow, then leave the stage and go back to the change room.

  CHAPTER 5

  Surprise Act

  While the other contestants are performing, Carly and Mai sit on the floor in the change room grumbling about their performance.

  Mai “I think we really messed that up.”

  Carly “Yeah, thanks to your clumsy act.”

  Mai “But you were the one that put your foot through the tambourine.”

  Carly “Maybe, but you made us fall over.”

  Mai “We’re more like a Sister Act Catastrophe!”

  The girls break into fits of laugher as they get back on their feet.

  Carly “Hope everybody forgets about the talent quest by Monday.”

  Mai “We should just never go back to school. Maybe we should never leave our houses again.”

  Just then a voice comes over the loudspeaker: “The winner in this section is Carly and Mai, the Singing Nuns.” The girls look at each other in shock.

  Carly “We won! Mr. Prince is calling us for our prize.”

  The girls run up on stage.

  Mai (whispering) “So do we make a speech?”

  Carly (whispering back) “Yeah, you go first.”

  Mai “Thanks everyone. We’ll love our dance lessons.”

  Carly “Yes, thanks heaps. We can’t wait to start tap dancing.”

  Mr. Prince continues over the loudspeaker: “Thank you girls, well done. But the dancing lessons you’ve won are for ballroom dancing and you’ll need to find two male partners to dance with.”

  The girls look at each other.

  Carly and Mai “Oh no, not boys. Our sister act’s definitely over!”

  audience The people who come to watch you perform and hopefully applaud afterwards!

  costume What you wear to help you portray the character that you are playing.

  curtain call When you stay on stage at the end of your show because everyone is clapping so loudly. The curtain often opens and closes lots of times, too.

  encore When you come back on stage for a repeat performance.

  stage fright When you are so afraid of performing on stage that you drop things and forget what to do.

  Make sure that you practise a lot before the talent quest.

  Check that your costume is on properly. You don’t want it to fall off while you’re on stage.

  Even if you’re nervous, try to smile.

  Make sure that your brothers sit at the back of the hall so they can’t heckle you or throw things.

  Be really careful when you walk up the stairs and onto the stage—tripping over is really embarrassing.

  Make sure that someone videotapes your performance. Then you can have a good laugh when you get home.

  If you put on a show, charge money for people to see it and give the proceeds to a charity.

  Don’t eat too much food before you go on stage, especially if you’re nervous.

  The most popular talent show seen on TV around the world is “Idol”. Over 100000 Americans auditioned for the fourth series of “American Idol” in 2005.

  Talent quests are not only used for entertainment. There are academic talent quests for English, Science and even Maths.

  Missy Higgins was discovered on a radio talent show called “Unearthed”. In 2005, she became the youngest performer ever to receive the ARIA award for Song of the Year.

  Australian talent show “Young Talent Time” ran for 17 years from 1971 to 1988 and had only one host the entire time, Johnny Young.

  When someone says “break a leg” before you go on stage, they are wishing you good luck.

  Internationally famous Australian band Silverchair were discovered in a talent quest segment called “Pick Me” on a TV show called “Nomad”.

  The Tawag ng Tanghalan is one of the longest running talent shows in the Philippines. The show’s name means “Call of the Stage” in English.

  1 What does it mean when someone says “break a leg” to an actor?

  2 What is the name of the most popular talent quest in the world?

  3 What does it mean if you hear “Encore!” being called out by the audience?

  4 Who can compete in a talent quest ?

  5 Who is the youngest singer to win Song of the Year at the ARIA awards?

  6 Which Australian band was discovered on a talent quest segment called “Pick Me”?

  7 What family member is really annoying at talent quests?

  8 If you get stage fright, what are you scared of?

  How did you score?

  If you got all 8 answers correct, think of a stage name—you’re ready to be a star performer.

  If you got 6 answers correct, being a member of the production crew could be more your style.

  If you got fewer than 4 answers correct, stick with the audience and practise your loudest clapping.

  Hey Girls!

  I hope that you have as much fun reading my story as I have had writing it. I loved reading and writing stories when I was young.

  At school, why don’t you use “Talent Quest” as a play and you and your friends can be the actors.

  Bring in some costumes from home. Try sheets for the nuns’ outfits and some ribbons and tambourines as props. Your school may have a stage where the story could be set.

  So … have you decided who is going to be Mai and who is going to be Carly?

  Now, with your friends, read and act out this play in front of your classmates. It’ll definitely make the whole class laugh.

  You can also take the story home and get someone to act out the parts with you.

  So, get ready to have more fun with your reading than a worm in an apple!

  And remember, Girlz Rock!

  Shey talked to Jacqueline, another Girlz Rock! author.

  Shey “Have you ever been in a talent quest?”

  Jacqueline “Sure have, and I won first prize!”

  Shey “Wow! The other contestants must’ve been pretty hopeless.”

  Jacqueline “There was only one other entrant and she was nearly as good as me. But I got the prize.”

  Shey “Who decided that?”

  Jacqueline “Me, the other contestant was my reflection in the mirror!”

  Shey “Ha, you should have won the comedy prize for that!”

 

 

  Shey Kettle, Talent Quest

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