Author Visits: Filton Hill

I'd like to say a massive THANK YOU to Laura Walker and everyone I met from Filton Hill Primary, St Michael's Primary, Holy Trinity Primary, Baileys Court Primary and Charborough Road Primary for the amazing welcome they gave me when I visited them all last week!

This was a really special visit, because it brought together around 360 children from five different schools in Bristol.  Many of them had read or were reading Varjak Paw, and the level of excitement around the room was just fantastic.  Some of them could just not stop reading!

I loved talking to them about reading, writing and books, and hearing all their inspiring dreams and ambitions.  They had many brilliant questions too!  We didn't have quite enough time to answer them all, so if anyone would like to ask another question, or to say anything about the visit or my books, just leave me a comment below.

It was a total pleasure to sign books for everyone who wanted them at the end of the day; you could really feel the buzz that the visit had created around reading!  There was even a journalist from the Filton Voice covering it; here's his piece about it.  And finally – THANK YOU again to everyone who made this such a special day!

Author Visits: Moorlands Primary

I'd like to say a very big THANK YOU to all the staff and students at Moorlands Primary for the wonderful welcome they gave me when I visited last week!  This is a school that really believes in the power of reading for pleasure.  Everywhere you go in Moorlands, you see books being celebrated and talked about; on the door of every classroom, there's an update telling you what the teacher is currently reading.  And in the classrooms, there are amazing displays about books – like this one!

So I really enjoyed talking to Years 6, 5, 4 & 3 about books and reading.  They had a very wide selection of favourite books, which shows just how deep the reading culture is at this school.  It was wonderful to hear some people say Varjak Paw was their favourite – things like that make all the hard work of writing feel worthwhile!

There were lots of excellent questions too, though we didn't have quite enough time to answer them all, so if anyone at Moorlands would like to ask another question, or to say anything about my visit or the books, just leave me a comment below!

At the end of the day, it was a pleasure to sign books for everyone who wanted one.  And it was absolutely amazing to see responses like this one afterwards on Twitter - so thanks again to Mr Lee, Mr Ruddick, Mr Biddle, Miss Eyles, and everyone else who made this such a special and memorable day!