Monday October 21st 2024
Dear Diary,
To kick school visits off this week, I spent today at Charlton Kings Junior, just a few miles from home. Things were a little topsy turvy for this particular visit — I launched straight into an hour-and-forty-five-minute workshop for ninety Year 5 pupils first thing, and I didn’t deliver my assembly until just before lunchtime. But this change of routine didn’t seem to cause a problem, as the Year 5 pupils came up with some super stories and colourful characters during their workshop. It was actually rather nice to do longer than normal sessions, as it meant more pupils could read their creations aloud. And they came up with some absolute humdingers! The Year 4 pupils were just as imaginative during their workshop this afternoon, which ended with an abundance of quick-fire questions for me from a number of budding authors. (And many more questions that I sadly didn’t get the time to answer.) I couldn’t help but admire Charlton Kings Junior’s ‘We love reading @ CKJS’ wall at lunchtime, and I’m happy to report that all the pupils there really DO love reading. This was evidenced multiple times throughout the day… and through the fact that 51 pupils had ordered a copy of WARNING: Magic Can Be Dangerous! prior to my visit!!! When they all trailed off to their classrooms to collect their copies for signing, I thought some of them must have misunderstood the instruction. But no… 51 of them already had a copy!!! I couldn’t believe it. (Amazon’s recent out-of-stock issue now makes sense.) As an author, it’s an absolute treat to see someone reading YOUR book, and it was simply wonderful to see how many pupils had their noses buried in a copy of mine in the playground at lunchtime. I really hope they’re all enjoying it. Sarah kindly organised my visit, but she sadly couldn’t be there today. I hope she’ll get to see all the wonderful work the pupils did when she next returns to school. Chris and all the other members of staff who helped throughout my visit were fantastic. And I’m so grateful to all the enthusiastic pupils for joining in so whole-heartedly with the activities, for volunteering to read their masterpieces aloud, and for making today’s visit another one I’ll never forget. And I’ll hopefully be returning to this spectacular school to tell them all more about WARNING: May Contain Dragons next year!
