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Filled under: Events, Readers, Schools | | Trackback
Fife has grown on me. For years, Fife has been where trains from Inverness go really slowly and stop in lots of places when I just want to get home to Edinburgh. But today I got off at a station in Fife and visited a local school (they invited me, I didn’t just turn up!) and I had a wonderful time!
I met 50 pupils at Parkhill Primary, in Leven, who had all read First Aid for Fairies. They had put dragon masks up on the wall, and written news stories about fabled beasts (the centaur giving a builder a fright in a distillery caught my eye) and they had lots and lots of fabulous questions about the book.
I do enjoy answering the “what’s your favourite book?” and “why did you become an author?” questions that I get from kids who are getting a chance to meet an author, any author, but I really love the specific questions I get from kids who know my books well.
Today, we discussed whether Yann was right to use dark magic on a weasel (I thought he was right, 50 P4/5/6s disagreed with me. Fair enough) and who were our favourite characters in First Aid. Yann and Catesby came out top, with Rona and Sapphire close behind. Sadly NO-ONE voted for Helen. It’s just not cool being human…
The best fun we had was making up a story, all of us at the same time, just chucking ideas in the air. We ended up with a brilliant story about a robber trying to steal the manuscript of the fourth First Aid (which I’d taken to show them) and all the kind people of Fife helping to rescue it.
The biggest surprise of the day was finding out the Gaelic for peat-cutting tool from their teacher. (It’s tairsgeir, which happens to be essential for something else I’m writing…) So thanks Mr Morrison. Teachers do know everything.
And I ate a macaroni pie on the way home.
So, lots of reasons to love Fife.
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Sounds like a great visit!
Now here’s a thing – have you noticed how many schools have the word “park” in their name? And “wood”? I know there are some great schools out there, but I do wonder if they doth protest a bit too much …
What – do you mean you’ve never done any author visits to schools with names like “Concreteville Primary”
or “Tarmacview Junior School”?
And now you HAVE to write about them! Your poor lackey minions probably went to school there.
thank you lari don for coming to see me thank you
thank YOU for inviting me!
Hi Lari this is one of the pupils from parkhill thank you so so so much for visiting us.xx
p.s thank you for signing our books for us
Thank you all for your great questions and ideas! And thanks to Mrs Gough and Mr Morrison for organising that huge signing queue!