Wow. That was a busy week. It felt like, every minute, I worked, ate, slept and breathed the Isle of  Wight Literary Festival. But it was great fun too.

The Inspire Yurt, all ready for my session

I particularly enjoyed the four school visits I did on Thursday and Friday (l always enjoy school visits.) I calculated that, over the four visits, I did 13 presentation, so by the end, it was all a bit of a blur!

Creating rhymes with the children at Northwood

But I do distinctly recall that I visited Northwood Primary School (top quality Joke telling from the year 3 class) and Summerfields Primary School (gruelling Q&As!) on Thursday and Broadlea Primary School and Gatten and Lake Primary Schools on Friday.

Great fun sharing my stories with the children, creating some rhymes and letter pictures and fielding some tricky question. My favourite question? Gotta be from the year 2 class at Gatten and Lake: ‘you’re really tall: how did you get through the door?’ Flummoxed.

Big thumbs-up from Broadlea!

And then, after the authors’ reception at the Royal Yacht Squadron (doncha know?) on Friday evening, it was on to the main event on Saturday and Sunday.

Had great fun sharing my books, Isabella, Rotten Speller and Isabella’s Adventures in Numberland and helping the children make letter portraits and letter puppets.

Also really enjoyed selling books and meeting lots of book lovers in the Isle of Wight children’s authors’ pop-up book shop. Great to spend some quality time with some lovely local authors. Can’t wait til next year!

The letter portraits were a hit!

Though first, I have the small matter of a book launch to get on with!

Creating a letter person at Broadlea

Lots of interaction from the years 2, 3 and 4 at Summerfields