At 10 o’clock on a grey day in May, over 250 children from four
schools filed into a hall at Chandlings school brimming with excitement about
what was about to happen.
After a brief introduction from Christine Cook, the Chandlings
head teacher, multi award-winning author Cressida Cowell took to the floor.
Cressida immediately captured the children’s attention with
stories of childhood holidays spent on an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland. Her father was an environmentalist who worked
with the likes of David Attenborough.
Although he loved his work, he missed the outdoors, so the family spent
weeks at a time on the island with no electricity. As time passed, they built a house which
meant that they could spend summers at a time roaming the island.
Cressida talked about how the surroundings inspired her
creativity as she began life as a writer and how characters from her book were
inspired by sea creatures. She talked
about giants and fairies inspiring locations in her books and how illustrations
from other books and fashion prints helped her develop ideas for the drawings. 
She taught the children how to speak Dragonese whilst the adults
in the room were told to put their hands over their ears so they couldn’t hear what
was going on. Needless to say, the
children fell about laughing at what they were taught.
The event closed with Cressida talking about ‘Free Writing
Friday’ which she launched at the end of April.
It’s a new schools campaign designed to encourage primary school children
to write for pleasure. You can read more
about the initiative here.
The event closed with
Cressida answering questions from the audience before a queue formed for the
children to get their books signed.
The event was repeated in the afternoon at Thomas Reade
School with pupils from OLA Juniors in attendance. The response about Free Writing Friday was
excellent and the excited children were thrown imaginary feathers to help
inspire their creativity.
Both events were brilliant, and Cressida was outstanding. The children hung onto every word and left
the halls buzzing with ideas.
After the school events were finished, Cressida headed to
Mostly Books where the team had re-arranged the shop in preparation for her
in-shop signing. A queue had begun to
form well before the event started with excited children clutching their books
in anticipation of meeting the author.
Cressida didn’t disappoint!!
She chatted to every child, signed their books and posed for
photos. After their books were signed, each
child was offered a dragon stamp on their arm and in their books to remind them
of meeting Cressida. After over an hour
of chatting and book signing, the last guest left the shop happy and inspired
after meeting such a world class author.
More photos of the event can be found on our Facebook page here.
