World Book Weak
I write this on Mother’s Day, with a sore throat and a head full of cotton wool (most of us compose our posts in advance: this is not a live broadcast!) I am ILL. I have been awake for much of the past three nights because as soon as I lie down, I cough. The past week has been INTENSE and now I’m paying the price, but I wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything!
The reason for my current condition is school visits: lots of them, all over the place. I have talked to kids from Reception right through to Year Eight, so for the youngest groups I harked back to some of my earliest work, from when I wrote and illustrated picture books. And I realised something: my very first book was published twenty-three years ago! This one, Under The Stairs, is twenty years old this year:
Everything under the stairs comes to life: here, Sophie, mounted on the Garden Chair Horse, fights off the Hooversaurus with her Umbrella-Sword
…She also encounters the Golflogog, the Tenniswellies, and the Sneezing Dusterbirds.
Happy 20th Anniversary, Under The Stairs! If only it were still in print…
The infant school kids were a delight, and made me want to revisit picture books. To paraphrase Dr Seuss: ‘Oh the writings you can write!’ But…argh! Where to fit it all in?!
By Friday I was hurting, but the day brought one of the highlights of the week: going into local primary Campsbourne School, where they take the dressing-up-as-a-book-character very seriously indeed. Or rather, not seriously: I couldn’t help wondering how the teacher who wore a Wild Thing Max onesie was able to teach anything that day. I suspect the one dressed as Gandalf had more gravitas – or perhaps not: she was a woman, after all. Among the kids, I met everyone from Miss Havisham to a Dalek.
The wonderful Karen McCombie is far too modest to mention this, but she’s the reason Campsbourne had no fewer than EIGHT special visitors for WBD – writers, illustrators, storytellers. Karen, you are a star. 
I also did a World Book Day interview: you can check it out here.
Phew! What was your highlight of World Book Week? Did you dress up? Did you have a special visitor? Did you buy a book with your £1 WBD token? I hope you discovered something new and wonderful – after all that’s what WBD is all about. Or rather, World Book Week, as it’s become. OK, I’m off for a lie down now…
We had reading time in the school hall in groups of three or two with two eleven year olds and one nine year old. We took turns reading a book out loud.The next day our teacher brought our class to a local book shop to use our vouchers.
Hi Aoife, hope the readings were fun! And that you found yourself a good book. Happy reading!
Fiona – I agree … PLEASE do some picture books! Those images are beautiful! And 20 years on is a good time to start again! Since you ask, my world book day has been going on for two weeks and will culminate in November. WBD forever!
Oh wait – maybe I should leave a link to my post about it http://www.candygourlay.com/2013/03/from-hackney-to-holland-park-from.html
Yes, everyone check out Candy’s little film; it’s a delight!
If someone could just teenager-sit for me. And coordinate maintenance work. And shop, cook and clean… Thank you Candy, but I want to write the longer books as well! Can’t do both. :-/
Hope you get better Fiona. x I brought the book, Bittersweet, I have a twisted knee so, i’ll most likely finish it today. Been reading Summers Dream too. Finished that a few days ago. Been writing too!
Thank you Laura! Still feeling lousy: have reached the snotty stage now. And outside it’s Siberia. Hope your knee untwists itself, but nice that you have Cathy Cassidy’s company in the meantime!
My snotty nose sends greetings to yours! I think cold bugs love World Book Day Week too – I bet we are not alone in having amazing times and then collapsing into ill little puddles afterwards!
Definitely not! Get well soon, Joan. Would help if that little glimpse of spring from last week would make a return…
Poor thing! That happened to me last year. A fantastic visit to the British international School in Bucharest for World Book Week, working across all the age groups up to 14, then home and an awful cough and flu. Won’t tell you how long it took me to get over it! But the week in Bucharest was worth it. Honest. Hope you feel much better soon.
Hi Maggi – ah, more exotic location than mine; I was just all over the UK. Have yet to be invited abroad! Hope I do sometime. I bet it was fab – I’ve never been to Bucharest. Yes: exhausting but worth it! Thank you.
Hi Fiona,
Hope you have a BIG box of tissues to hand get better soon.
On WBD I was part of an author team consisting of Andy Briggs, Craig Simpson and Lee Weatherly, competing at a lit quiz against nine secondary schools.
It’s surprising just how competitive the evening was, but the authors held their own, just – and came joint first with a team of pupils from Robert Mays School. It was a fab evening but the Robert Mays Team threw down the gauntlet as they left, telling us they would beat us next year.
Bring it on RMS. We’ll be ready for you
A big thanks to all the teacher and staff involved, but especially the lovely Paula Ward from RMS.
Julie
Thanks Julie! Can’t beat a good lit quiz.
Hola! Well, like you, Ms Dunbar, I came back after my book talk travels feeling like I’d been run over by a bus. *Thunk* But at least the bugs kept at bay while I was doing all my school visits! Thank you for your kind wordies about WBD at Campsbourne. They really know how to celebrate it, don’t they? I LOVE the staff’s enthusiasm for dressing up.It was very surreal seeing the head having an earnest conversation with a parent in the morning, while dressed as a pirate with her inflatable parrot gently swaying in the breeze… We had a fantastic assembly in the afternoon, with (book) prizes for writing, illustrating and – of course – dressing up. Though I have to say I was disappointed that my favourite outfit didn’t win… the girl dressed as The Lion, The Witch AND The Wardrobe (in case anyone is wondering, she wore a witch costume, held a toy lion, and walked around in a large, cardboard box with a door cut in it!).
Oh Karen, that has to be the BEST WBD costume ever – that is hilarious! I want to see a picture now. And yes, I’m disappointed too. Can’t imagine anything better than that! Though I’m sure the winner was also brilliant. So many inventive outfits.
Your chum Miss Havisham won!
Aha! Well, wouldn’t have won in the inventiveness stakes. Still chuckling!