Darcy Dolphin and the Best Birthday Ever publishes today! Sail over to your nearest land-based bookshop or surf to a reputable online book retailer to grab a copy today...
Here's a turn up for the books - Slovakian Creature Teacher hits the shelves today! Translation by Jozef Klinga.
Today I led a character development workshop at Steyning Bookshop - sixteen very imaginative budding writers got busy creating sea creature characters, using pictures and some rather whiffy beachcombed objects as inspiration (yes sorry about that guys!). First we looked at the real life characteristics of sea creatures and tried to find ways in which these could be used to create fun characters. We had an hour and a half which was plenty of time to start writing a story based on their characters, too. All in all, a really fun fishy morning!
All four books in the Creature Teacher series are now available in the US, published by Capstone Publishing. Hurrah!
Flippering fishsticks, land-dwellers! I only nearly forgot to tell you that now you can get your fins on my newest, shiny, bubbly, fintastic diary. It's called Darcy Dolphin is a Little Bit Magic and has a lovely red cover which makes it easy to spot on land-based bookshelves. Underwater it would just look blue. It would also turn to papier mache. Anyway, go buy it if you dare!
For World Book Day week I travelled to Leicester, to do a day of dolphin related activities with the children at Thistly Meadow School in Blaby. I drove up in my camper van, Daphne, who whilst being yellow and adorable is also old and unreliable, so I was relieved to arrive in Leicester in one piece!
The day was fantastic. I really love doing school visits anyway, but this one was really special. The children were all dressed up as their favourite book characters, and both children and staff were super-welcoming and enthusiastic. I did an assembly to the whole school, followed by writing workshops for years 2-5.
The workshops were brand new, and I was really pleased with how they went down. It's hard planning workshops when you don't have any prior knowlege of the pupils, and only a limited time with each group to get them inspired and producing something - particuarly when they haven't read the book. So I focussed on creating animal characters, and producing character 'fact-sheets', and they blew me away with how much creative energy they put into their work! There were some fabulous ideas: a karate-chopping guinea pig, a humpback whale music teacher and the Littlest Shark in the Ocean - to name a few! I really wish I'd had a bit more time so we could have gone on to develop some plot ideas from their characters - I'd love to find out what adventures they had!
All in all, I had a fintastic day and I hope the children enjoyed it as much as I did. I'd like to say a special thank you to the Headteacher, Mr Bowpitt, to David Hill for organising everything, and to Lisa Smith for the fab photos.
Hoo-ray! It's been a long wait, but finally my first book in the Darcy Dolphin series, The Fintastic Diary of Darcy Dolphin, is out there in the world! Humans can buy it at all the usual land-based book stores or surf to their favoured internet book retailer.
My early reader, Don't Get in a Mess, publishes today! It's perfect for young readers who are just starting to read on their own. But seriously, my lovelies - if you want to get in a mess, please feel free!
Gark! Turkish for 'burp' I’m very happy to announce that some of the Creature Teacher titles will soon be available in FIVE languages: English, Turkish, Hungarian, Vietnamese and Slovak!
Happy birthday to my latest book, Puss in Football Boots, which publishes today.
Football-mad Jack’s gran buys him a cat instead of a kit for his birthday, but this cat’s got a few tricks up its sleeve!
Lovely morning presenting prizes for the Steyning Festival Children's Story Competition and reading their fabulous stories - well done all!
Creature Teacher and I had a really fab time yesterday at the Bookfeast Festival, held in the superb Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
The children were really keen and engaged - and I loved all their ideas for creating a plot based on a similar idea to Creature Teacher.
They asked some really interesting and thoughtful questions at the end too.
I’m super-mega- excited to announce that Creature Teacher won the Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award 2016 in the Junior Fiction category!
Here’s a pic of the cool trophy that is now sitting proudly on my mantelpiece.
As part of the award process, some art-tastic pupils made this brilliant animated book trailer for Creature Teacher. I would NEVER have been able to do this, so I think they should get an award too!
