Thursday, January 25, 2007

An email from Discovery Class

I received this lovely email today.

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Thank you very much for coming to visit our class. We liked your book about the rainbow frogs. It is in our special book corner so we can read it every day. Thank you very much for teaching us how to draw a really good frog and an alligator. Thank you for the pictures and the postcards. Maybe one day you can come and visit us again.

Love from Discovery class xxx
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A second school visit


I was lucky enough to be invited back to talk to the children of Discovery Class at St Peter's school in Chippenham, and was made very welcome by 27 excitable four and five year olds and their lovely teacher, my sister-in-law Tamsyn. I persuaded her to pose for a photo.


I told the children about the process of illustrating my two picture books, Three Stre-e-etchy Frogs and Rainbow Frogs, then we read the stories and I answered the children's questions before they drew their own versions of one of the pages.

It was great fun to walk around the class and to see their drawings in progress, some of the children faithfully reproduced the red, green and blue frogs mentioned in the text, jumping away from the alligator, but some had obviously been thinking laterally. One little girl had drawn a family of happy penguins sharing the frogs' pond and one little boy had decided to ignore the froggy theme and had chosen to draw some colourful Transformers instead!

The classroom walls were full of the children's photos, drawings and paintings.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Iris and Peregrine



These bearded irises were a Christmas gift for Mum, and Dad had the peregrine falcon below.