Thursday, June 12, 2008

My Baby!

There's a warm fuzzy feeling I get when I hold a new book for the first time. A book encompasses lots of hours of thinking, typing, scribbling and pacing up and down (and quite a bit of chocolate eating). So, even though these twelve copies of The Boy with an Axe in his Head were digitally produced copies before the main production run, they still made me go all squiggly inside.

A couple of days before my visit to school, the books arrived and I put some thoughts to what would be happening during the four mornings at Weddington Primary School.
I'd discussed what I'd be doing with the children with Mrs Ward, the head teacher and Miss Booth, the literacy co-ordinator.
I was to spend a morning with each of four classes. Each morning would go like this:
• I'd introduce myself and explain what I do and how I came up with the idea.
• Explain the process of creating the book - words, drawings, page layouts etc.
• Hand out copies to the class and read to book to them while they followed the pictures.
• After a brief explanation of the mechanics of poetry, have the children write a verse of their own.
• Once a verse has been arrived at, create an illustration, bearing in mind how it would sit with the verse on the page.
• Finally, the children would read their verses and show the illustration to the rest of the class.

That was quite a lot to fit into a morning, but I was sure the teachers knew what we could achieve.

I gathered up my preliminary drawings and bits and pieces - and twelve fresh copies of the book - and headed off to school.

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