Adventuremice at Meavy Primary

When I was little (and still now!), I loved reading James Herriot’s books about working as a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales. My favourite bits were the funny animal stories (like the farting boxer and the overindulged dog Trixywoo), but the landscape also made an impression on me. Herriot, on some of his various calls out to farms, would stop his car, get out, and admire the view of the hills, marvelling that he could work in such a place. I had that same feeling, driving across Dartmoor in the mists and shifting beams of sunlight: wow, this is my job! And crossing the moor, my car arrived at Meavy Primary School, nestled into a valley where I’ve often gone for long walks.

It wasn’t only me in the car; in fact, our car was very full, with my co-author Philip Reeve, First Draft Books bookseller Leslie Leggett, me and a LOT OF BOOKS. Here we are with Years 3 & 4 teacher Gemma Middleton, who had worked with us to organise the visit!

Philip and I led an all-school Adventuremice assembly featuring our latest book, Adventuremice: Of Mice and Mummies, and taught the children how to draw an Egyptian Mouse pharoah! Here are a couple examples I managed to snap:

On our Adventuremice website, we have a guide to modern Mouse Hieroglyphics (not the ancient ones in the book, don’t try to translate those with this guide). So see if you can spot the word the pharoah is saying…

I hope the children try writing more in Mouse Hieroglyphics, it’s a fun code for sending secret messages. :)

If you missed the assembly, here’s a video guide to drawing your own Egyptian mouse.

But it wasn’t only Adventuremice! Quite a few of the children had read my first book together with Philip, Oliver and the Seawigs. And one of them designed and built her own Seawig - yay!

One of the most fun things about visiting schools is getting to see work by children who have gone above and beyond what’s required and come up with some wonderfully creative things. Here’s a lovely book a boy showed us that he’d made:

I loved his colours and layouts!

This book has so much fun and energy to it, I love it.

We got to the school a bit early, so I was able to draw a poster for the library:

Huge thanks to Gemma and all the staff at Meavy Primary for your enthusiasm and making us feel so welcome! And to Leslie, for coordinating all the books, so children could right away read the stories we’d been talking about.