Windwhistle Primary School Library Opening

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I had a brilliant day today. Jenny Harpur, Deputy Head of the wonderfully named Windwhistle Primary School in Weston Super, Mare invited me to officially open the new school library which she has been planning and arranging and building and stocking and getting ready over the last two or three years.

I got the easy part, cutting the ribbon and letting everyone in!

I spent the rest of the day storytelling to all the different groups in the school.

I was really pleased that I’d had yet another edit to my Naughty Girl story that I’ve mentioned before. I had a go at it last night and it seems to be really coming together. I’ve read it a few times in schools over the last few weeks and each time I get a new insight.

I think, after about ten years, I’m almost there with it now. I read it to year 2 and the nursery. No one was scared too much which was good!

Thanks all of you for a wonderful and fabulously sunny day. Enjoy your Library – I’m sure you will!

Mitcheldean Endowed Primary School

I had a wonderful day on Monday, at Mitcheldean Endowed Primary School. I’ve known the Head Teacher, Julia Dowding, for some time, Indeed, her husband was my children’s primary school head. Mr Powell, who taught my children maths, was also there, so it was a bit of a reunion!

What a very hot day. We were in the hall with the doors wide open and, luckily, a fan twirling around in the centre of the octagonal, pointy ceiling.

At lunchtime, I sat in on the auditions for lead roles in the school production. All were very good – I wouldn’t want to be the one making the decisions as to who plays which role.

Again, my www.shoo-tube.com video drawing lessons had gone before me and some of the children had been busily drawing the Ginger Ninja. If no one else wants to reprint the Ginger Ninja, I think maybe I should make use of modern online printing technology and put it back into print myself! The book seems to have a definite, continuing life.

Thanks everyone in Mitcheldean for a really great day – Keep on reading!

North Baddesley Infants School – Hampshire

I had a wonderful day yesterday at North Baddesley Infants School in Hampshire. They booked so long ago that they had slipped of the calendar and had become double-booked! All that was sorted and, even though my Sat Nav crashed on me. I got there on the right day at the right time.

Year One were starting their Space Theme, so we talked about Ricky Rocket and I showed them how to draw him. I love doing this. All the intense concentration that goes into the drawings is amply rewarded by the fabulous drawing that all the children did. Each one so different and full of the artists character. It’s such a shame children can’t keep that spirit going. There comes a time when they start comparing themselves to each other and to great artists and decide they are no good at drawing, but they are all ready good at drawing and have their own natural style too – it takes years to regain that! After a bit of discussion, I left them with ideas to carry on with a Ricky Rocket story of their own.

I hadn’t realised that The Reception Year were doing space too, so I dropped my planned session and reminisced about the Apollo Space Missions and did lots of drawings of Saturn Five rockets and Lunar landing modules.

Year Two had been writing transformation stories about magic stones. I searched my bag to see if I had Viking Vik And The Lucky Stone with me, but I didn’t. On the spur of the moment I decided to retell it from memory aided with drawings. It worked really well, almost better, as I didn’t have to refer to the book and so all my attention could be focussed on the audience. It was a bit of a revelation to me actually. I was ably helped by one boy who had borrowed the book from the Library recently, and he helped me remember the bits that I forgot!

Many thanks for a great day and good luck to all you young NASA trainee astronauts!

An Audience with an Author – Widnes

On Wednesday I visited Widnes, near Liverpool, for an event called “An audience with an Author” in the sport’s hall at the Viking’s Rugby League Stadium. Widnes is a very Viking name, so I started off talking about Viking Vik, which seemed very suitable. Some of the audience looked as if they coulld have just stepped of a longship. Their families have probably lived locally ever since the Vikings came the first time!

The hall had quite a low roof with acoustic tiles so the sound was quite good. The afternoon session was double booked so I had to share the hall with the OAP table tennis club! We were behind a curtain at the boxing club end of the hall. The tickety-tock of the table tennis balls turned out to be not too much of a distraction after all – bizarre, but quite soothing. We hid the automatic boxing punchbag man behind one of my banners as we thought it would either scare the children or mesmerise them. I didn’t get a go on him, but I imagine if you punch him in the right place, an electronic voice says, “Owww!”

Thanks everyone for a great day.

Headfield Junior School, Dewsbury

I had a wonderful day at Headfield Junior School in Dewsbury today. I was asked to come and talk about The Ginger Ninja. It turns out I wrote the Ginger Ninja fifteen or sixteen years ago. I haven’t talked about those books in schools for a long time and they have been out of print for more than five years.

The Ginger Ninja is unlike everything else that I have written since. It is really quite autobiographical – yes, I was a ginger kitten when I was young. Writing it is was quite an emotional experience, so much so that I think I decided not to write anything quite as deep again.

I’ve not forgotten it, but I’ve moved on. So It is amazing to find that Ginger is fresh and alive and well in Dewsbury. The children were real fans and wanted to get on and read the rest of the series. The school had been bidding away on ebay to get extra copies! I think I signed one of every edition that has ever been printed. They even had a semi-hardback library edition I’d never seen before.

The children had been doing cover designs and had been writing Ginger’s diaries, charting the story from Ginger’s daily point of view. They were really fab and really quite moving.

It’s extraordinary to me to think that Ginger is continuing his life out there, on his own without my help – Thank you Headfield Juniors for taking Ginger and Tiddles to your hearts.

Garway Primary School – Herefordshire

I’ve had a lovely morning today, at Garway Primary School in Herefordshire, where I was honoured to be asked to officially open their lovely new library.

It was a beautiful morning. The rape fields are starting to flower, so the countryside is turning dazzling yellow.

Garway is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and very lovely for it. Theirs must be some of the luckiest children in the country, if not the world! There are not many in the school, so the teachers have quite a lot of time for the children and it shows, all of them bright and perky, well-prepared and full of questions. It’s the kind of school that I’m sure everyone wishes they went to or that they could get their children into.

When you have a small number of children in a school, they all know each other really well. I suppose that has its drawbacks – like there’s no place to hide – but in the long run I’m sure it pays to have smaller class sizes and a certain distance from all the pressures of modern life.

After my sessions I was grilled by the school journalists, who kept coming up with supplemental questions. One of them, I’m sure, is going to be a writer when she grows up!

Good luck to you all and enjoy your lovely new library!

Pontygwaith Primary

Pontygwaith Primary clings to the side of the mountainside, high above the Rhondda Valley at the very top of the very top street. I had a great day, yesterday, telling stories, drawing and plotting new stories for my characters for the children to write after I’ve gone.

Year five had a hamster, which they said was a bit boring because it sleeps all day long, but year six had week old chicks! Very cute but apt to pooh all over your hands if you pick them up!

Virtual Skype School Visits

Is anyone interested in trying a virtual School Visit on the whiteboard using Skype. Skype is probably banned on your system, so you would need to get clearance to use it, have it installed on your class laptop or whatever you use, and yo would need a skype account too. If this doesn’t sound too daunting, get in touch!

Milan Trip

My head has nearly stopped spinning after a very busy week. Monday and Tuesday, I went to visit the Sir James Henderson British School in Milan.
I was very brave the first morning, and rather than hop in a taxi, I braved the metro and walked the last part. You don’t get as much local flavour in a taxi.

I had a wonderful, warm welcome at the school from Delia O’Leary and Sally Ellis, who I’d been organising the trip with. Mostly they were relieved that was actually there. I’d had to rebook flights twice as EasyJet cancelled from Bristol and BA went on strike and Heathrow. Eventually I went RyanAir from West Midlands.

The school goes from Nursery up to eighteen. I was expecting a large number of expat british children, but they were very much in the minority. There were a lot of italian children and a great mix of other nationalities. English is very much an international language these days, the parent see fluency in English and rubbing up against English culture a positive step, while maintaining the family culture at home. I think I would have enjoyed that as a child.

My session with the nursery was very memorable. As the children are not so conversant in English at that stage, we had an exchange of words. I taught Eric that a Crab is a crab and he taught me that it’s called Granchio in Italian! We almost got round to singing a Nip! NIp! song. I think I’ll have to work on that. Nip! Nip! is ridiculously deceptively simple story about looking for the smallest crab. It is SATPINMD basic phonics and nothing is over three letters long. I have no hesitation showing to year six or over – they seem to be seduced by it and all end up smiling. Such a little story, but one I’m quite proud of.

I worked my way through the lower school over two days, reading drawing and having fun. Year 4, I think it was, even got me to sing! The school has a lovely, friendly atmosphere. It’s British, but it’s not – it’s different. The children have an evident hunger to learn and the year sixes are not so jaded as they are at home, especially at this time of year, when they are ready to move on. I feel they haven’t the same pressure to be grown up.

At break time the whole place comes alive with hundreds of children, of all ages, pouring up and down the central staircase. I have a wonderful image of the Nursery children clinging to the handrail, on their way down to my session. Bigger children tumbled all around them, but they doggedly continued, like a roped-together mountaineering team, until, some slightly older children, unasked, took pity and helped them down the long descent of “Big Steps”. A small sign of the caring attitude that was obvious through out the school.

I didn’t take any pictures because I ate far too much Pizza and was busy having a wonderful time! Many thanks to you all.

Longlevens Infants day 2

Another great day at Longlevens. The children weren’t quite so hyper today I think that’s because they were all dressed up as book characters.

I find group dynamics quite fascinating. I meet many groups of children in many different combinations. The children I saw today were essentially the same as the children I saw yesterday – but today, in their alter-identities, they were individuals whereas yesterday they were in uniform and so made up cohesive groups. A class of children in the same uniform work as one. A group of fairies, princesses, batmen, power rangers and Ben Tens want to be individuals.

As yesterday, they did some lovely drawings. As ever, it’s quite fascinating how a group of children draw the same picture but put so much of themselves into the same character. Some add pattern, some understand my instructions quite differently to how I show them and do the most amazing things. With a bit of detective work I get to see how they are interpreting the instructions.

Then there are the ones who say they can’t draw. What they mean is that theirs doesn’t look exactly like mine. Well, it never will, It will look different because we are all different. I think everyone can draw in the same way everyone can drive a car. But if you don’t actually do it and put the hours in, you will never get better or confident about it. So much in life is about putting in the hours.

There I go on again! I’m going on because I’m very tired at the end of a string of School and Library visits and need a nice lie in tomorrow.

Thanks for a great couple of days – and thanks for doing so much preparation, It made my visit really wonderful. Have a great Easter Holidays.