Events, Festivals, Libraries and Schools
I love meeting children and sharing my stories and passion for creativity. I have lots of different events and workshops that have been designed around my books to engage and inspire individual creativity. These sessions can be tweaked to suit your bespoke needs (ie live or virtual, age range, group numbers and length of session). However, the basic format is as follows…
Introduction
I talk about who I am, what I do and what it is like being an author and illustrator
2. Reading
I read one of my books to the children and talk about the themes/characters/ideas around it.
3. Drawing
I do a big draw that involves input and ideas from everyone to create something fun and new.
4. Making
Everyone gets the opportunity to be creative in a hands on craft activity that is based around the book.
Here are just some of the book events I do.
If there is a book of mine that isn’t here that you would like to feature in your event- then do get in touch!
Book Hospital is a picture book all about loving your books! It touches on themes of kindness and empathy from the perspective of a book. This can also open up discussions about what it is like to go to hospital.
The event is a lot of fun and I will bring my book first aid kit suitcase to help any books that need me!
I will read the book and we will talk about all the different types of stories there are. Using our own “story sandwich” ideas sheet we will develop our own new characters in their own new story.
We will make our own mini books in a special craft session. Getting creative using collage, drawing and stickers we will make a book face front cover of the characters created earlier with the “story sandwich” sheet.
At the end of the session I will play my ukelele and sing my “Book Hospital” song!
Onesie Party is a fun rhyming book celebrating the joy of wearing a onesie. However, at the end of the day- the best thing you can possibly be is yourself!
I will read the book then we will talk about what makes you you. We will celebrate our differences and strengths.
Next we will play the “Animal Onesie Wheel of Funsie!” where spinning the wheel around will tell me what sort of animal to draw and in what sort of onesie they’ll be wearing!
There will be a chance to design our own perfect onesies that reflects who we are and we will play a silly onesie mash up drawing game!
At the end of the session I will play my ukelele and sing my “Onesie Party” song!
Troll Swap is about Timothy Limpet (a troll) and Tabitha Lumpit (a girl). They are both different from others around them and feel out of place. Yet we discover at the end that is always good to be who you are- even if you are different.
I will read then book and then I will do a big draw… using ideas that everybody contributes to create a completely new type of troll-with a name and everything!
We will talk about the book and about the ideas of having two characters that swap places. Each using an A4 “opposites” worksheet we can think of our own two swapping characters that would be funnyin a story.
Everyone will get to visualise their own characters in a fun and colourful swip-swap picture.
This book is a funny twisted version of the familiar fairy story. I will read the book and then we will talk about what is the same and what is different.
I will do a big drawing of the bear, getting everyone to remind me what he looks like… don’t forget the scarf and boots!
Everyone will be able to get creative and draw something from the book (or something fairy-storyish) on a square of coloured paper. This will then be collaged onto the big drawing to create the bears long stripy scarf.
Using the bear/goldilocks drawing illustrated sheets everyone can be inspired to create their own colourful patterns and textures to add to the illustrated sheets.
This book is all about the pleasure of reading and the love of sharing a story. We will talk about which books people love and where they like to read and listen to stories.
I will read the book and get everybody to join in and help with the silly sound effects! Then I will do a huge drawing of the boy in the chair from the book. I will also add any animals from the story that people can remember!
We will talk about pattern and collage and how I use them in my illustrations. Then everyone will draw their own pattern (or something they liked from the book) on a square of coloured paper. At the end we will stick all the illustrated paper squares on the big drawing from earlier to create a beautiful colourful patchwork chair collage.
Everyone will also get the opportunity to design their own unique chair/place to read on a special drawing craft sheet.
