This year was my first proper experience of book week, and it was a total treat. I visited six schools, did four assemblies, two workshops, one literature festival, one family workshop and one panel.
I met hundreds of children and LOVED hearing their amazing ideas about magical creatures, their beautiful descriptive language and their original and surprising stories – not to mention ace questions, including one small girl who asked, ‘But is your book any good?’ (I told her I’d done my very best writing it and it was now up to her to decide!) I owe huge thanks to Sarah Tyson from Books Up North; and to Kirsty and Beth from Leeds School Library Services for organising fantastic school visits, driving me round and selling books - I’m so grateful, none of this would have happened without you!
Doing school visits is such a joy. It lets me connect to readers, bring my stories to life and spark new ones from the children I meet. I also love enthusing about – and demystifying - the reality and processes of working as an author.
I thought it might be useful for me to describe one of my author events, in case there are any teachers in any schools out there who are wondering what is involved.
When I’m presenting in a KS2 school assembly, my talk lasts around an hour. I start with my beautiful box of props, asking for volunteers to pull out a shiny egg, a dragon’s tooth, some polished lapis stones, and a silver necklace – each of these lets me introduce story elements from Dragon Daughter or Rise of the Shadow Dragons, and I’ve got some great slide images to add extra detail. After each item, I invite the children to close their eyes and imagine their own versions of these things: their own magic egg, precious stone, or necklace that contains a clue. I love hearing what the children have imagined – there are always some really incredible examples – and I explain that we will return to these story elements later on.
Afterwards, I read my favourite scene from the book, where the dragon eggs finally hatch, hopefully leaving people wanting to read more! Next, I present some of my favourite middle-grade dragon books, by writers including Andy Shepherd, Stephanie Burgis and Cressida Cowell, which always goes down well.
Liz with some dragon books!
Authors often get asked where their ideas come from, so I spend some time going through this in detail – explaining how my ideas for the dragons came from pets I’ve loved, including a fierce broody hen; and how the magical island of Arcosi is based on lots of real-life places. I always try to bring it back to the children’s own ideas, and how they can use things they know well in their stories. I want to boost their confidence and emphasise they are already full of ideas and expertise.
Finally, I talk about how you make a book, from writing rough ideas in a notebook, through working with an editor, showing photos of page proofs, explaining what stage the illustrations are created, when the book is printed, how it gets to a warehouse and then to a library or bookshop and on to a reader. Children are usually very surprised by how long each of these stages can take – and downright shocked by how long it took me to write Dragon Daughter! I talk about the importance of editing, how no one gets it right first time, and speak about my failures in a way that I hope will be encouraging!
At the end of the session, we go back to all the story elements the children imagined, and I leave them with a ‘recipe’ for their own magic story to develop later. We end with a Q&A and lots of dragon roars!
If you’d like me to come to your school, either to do this assembly talk, or a class-size creative writing workshop, please contact me either through Authors Aloud or direct here. I charge typical daily / half day rates plus travel, but I also offer discounts for local schools or schools who wouldn’t be able to book an author event otherwise. Please contact me to ask about this. I’m currently taking bookings for the autumn term 2020 onwards, and I’m happy to travel anywhere if train and accommodation costs are also covered.
Please get in touch and ask me to bring the dragons into your school!
