Blackawton Primary School

This morning Philip Reeve & I drove through lots of beautifully misty little lanes to Blackawton Primary School, near Totnes in Devon. The children we found there were enthusiastic, creative, and knew our books well!

Photo from the Blackawton Primary School weekly newsletter

Alice Swan, on the left, was one of the editors I worked with at Faber on The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories and she set up the day, with the generous support of Friends of Blackawaton School (thank you, FOBS!). Helen Perry is the School Administrator and the mastermind who knows how everything in the school works. And Jane Fincham, on the right, arrived with boxes from the Harbour Bookshop in Kingsbridge to make sure everyone could get their own signed and dedicated book.

Philip and I did an assembly featuring the latest book in our Roly-Poly Flying Pony series, Kevin vs the Unicorns. Then while Philip was working with the older children, telling them about his new Utterly Darkbooks, I led a Grumpycorn assembly and workshop with the lower primary where I led them in making their own unicorn books. Here are some of the book covers they drew!

While I admire the older children’s inventiveness and control of line, I absolutely adore watching how the littlest ones put so much energy into their drawing and sometimes even teach me wild new ways of drawing things.

In Philip’s island worldbuilding session, they came up with all sorts of landmarks:

Huge thanks to Class 2 teacher and Literacy Lead Vicky Llewellyn for looking after us, and Head Teacher Liam Fielding for all their support!

The school even heartily sang us a storybook song, written specially and accompanied on piano by their music teacher Tiggy Saint – thank you for making us feel so welcome! We hope the children will be inspired to make lots more drawings and stories.