I first met Mr Booth 4 years ago, when I visited another school where he was teaching at the time. We've kept in touch through Twitter, and I was delighted when he invited me to visit St Silas, where he now works, as well as Garston, which is also part of the Rainbow Education Trust. The visit began at Garson, where I was honoured and amazed to see their sensational Phoenix door (see above)!
Year 6 at Garston were reading Phoenix, while Year 4 had been reading Varjak Paw, so they had many great questions for me. It was inspiring for me as an author to see so much enthusiasm for books; it was clear that this was a school that really valued and celebrated reading. Here's a wonderful blog about the visit on the Garston website, with many more pictures!
After visiting Garson, I went on to St Silas, where I talked to Years 6, 5, 4 & 3 in an assembly. And it was immediately clear to me that this school valued and celebrated reading in just the same way. Many of the children at St Silas had read one of my books too, so they also had lots of great questions; more than we had time to answer! So if anyone from either school has more questions, or would like to say anything about the visit or my books, just leave me a comment below.
After the assembly, I did a creative writing workshop with Year 6 – Mr Booth's class – with the help of Miss Wardle. I'd already heard about their work on Mr Booth's Twitter, so I knew they would be great readers and writers, but I was blown away by the quality, creativity and imagination of the stories they wrote. I hope I might able to feature one or two of them on this blog, so watch this space! And in the meantime – THANK YOU again to everyone who made this such an enjoyable visit!
