St John’s Catholic Primary

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at St John’s and as it was a first-time visit it proved to be extra special. The morning started with a writing workshop in Year 4. The pupils kicked off the session by discussing nasty characters in books they had read. They explained why the characters were nasty and how…

Spring Hill Community Primary

I spent two fantastic afternoons at Spring Hill. During the first visit, I worked with both classes of Year 5 pupils. We discussed lots of nasty characters the children had encountered in books before pulling apart a piece of my writing which featured a particularly nasty kid called Bazza. The children discussed lots of alternative…

Unity Academy

It had been just under a year since my last visit to Unity so it was lovely to return. After squeezing nearly 400 pupils into the hall, I shared the latest instalment in my writing adventure. The children found out what Eric had been doing in his latest book and even got to see some…

Coppull Parish CE Primary

After a two-hour battle through blizzard conditions, I finally made it to Coppull Parish Primary for my first ever visit to the school. We hastliy rearranged the timings for the morning and kicked things off with an assembly. I shared my writing adventure from Impossible Tales to Eric 2 and even managed to squeeze in…

Westgate Primary

I love visiting schools and it’s always an extra bit special to visit a school for the first time. The morning at Westgate kicked off with a KS2 author assembly. In forty minutes, the children discovered what I’d been doing for the last four years! I explained about the Tales and Eric and even pulled…

World Book Day Week 2018

Tuesday saw a visit to Singleton Primary to share Danger Zone with the KS2 pupils. It was an action-packed hour filled with secret sessions about the book, sneaky peeks at the illustrations during development and the storytelling waistcoat even made an appearance! A top visit. Thanks Mrs Millward for organising the session and the book…

St Leonard’s CE Primary

It’s always extra special to visit a school for the first time, so I couldn’t wait to visit St Leonard’s. The morning kicked off with a whole school assembly. I explained to the children how I wrote my first book aged ten right through to the publication of the latest Eric Appleby adventure. I even…

Marsden Community Primary

I was excited to receive an invitation from Marsden Primary in Nelson to design then deliver a series of writing sessions with some of the Year 4 and 5 pupils. The six sessions covered lots of different aspects of story writing including characterisation, setting, creating action sequences and tension and forming endings. Over the six…

Barnoldswick CE Primary

I visited Barnoldswick in 2016 and had a marvellous time, so it was great to be invited back. After driving through some really snowy conditions, I kicked off the morning with an author assembly. The children discovered how the books were created. I talked through the writing/editing process and even showed the children the illustrations…

Boundary Primary

I spent the last academic year as Patron of Reading at Boundary Primary. It was lovely to return to work with Year 5. I’d been asked to work with the children on creating a ‘legend-style’ story to fit in with their literacy topic. After much thought, I decided to use one of the Impossible Tales…