School Visits: Park Hill Junior School

Late last year, I received one of the nicest letters I've ever read.  It was from a teacher called Sally Greenaway at a school called Park Hill, in Kenilworth.  She had just used Phoenix as a class book with her Year 6s – the first teacher I know of who has done this – and she was writing to let me know how it had gone:

"We began our space topic in September and this book worked perfectly alongside our topic work... When reading the book in the classroom, you could hear a pin drop and the children got thoroughly lost in the story of Lucky...  Thank you for writing such a moving and stimulating book."

She also enclosed some letters that her class had written to me.  They were so amazing that I really wanted to meet the people who wrote them!  So I offered to go and visit.

I discovered that they'd done a huge amount of fascinating work.  They'd visited the National Space Centre in Leicester, to learn more about the stars.  They'd made diaries from various characters' points of view; made newspaper articles and fact files; they'd even made Axxa boots!  Unfortunately I didn't get to see the boots, but I did see some of their writing and it was outstanding!

It was fantastic to meet these brilliant readers and writers, and to hear all their thoughts and questions about the book.  It was also great to meet all the Year 4s and 3s who were doing Varjak Paw at the same time!  So I'd just like to thank everyone at Park Hill for the wonderful warm welcome.

I found a lovely comment here on my site shortly after the visit:

Hi, I am called Molly
I am from Park hill Junior school in Kenilworth and you visited my school today I wanted to thank you

Thank you very much, Molly! And if anyone else would like to leave a comment about the visit or my books, this is the place to do it!