Lovely day today! Thanks to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), I got to share my dark skies rhyming picture book, Jacob Starke Loves The Dark, with the very receptive and super-polite year 3 and 4 children at Nine Acres Community Primary School.

‘How come?’ I hear you ask. Well, at the end of last year, the CPRE very kindly bought 42 copies of my Jacob Starke Loves The Dark and gave one as a Christmas present to every primary school on the Isle of Wight. My visit today was part of that initiative; the first visit to a primary school with the CPRE, highlighting the importance of dark skies and the issue of light pollution.

With Dawn Haig-Thomas of CPRE

So pleased with the reception from the Nine Acres children (nothing like a spontaneous round of applause to raise the spirits!) – and particularly pleased by their plans to explore the book’s themes in more detail in their story sessions which now close each school day.

I was inspired to write Jacob Starke Loves the Dark by the work of groups such as CPRE, Vectis Astronomical Society (VAS) and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) to win International Dark Sky status for an area on the south west coast of the Isle of Wight, near where I live. So it’s exciting to be working with them to take the message about the dangers of light pollution into local schools.

Pleased to see the initiative has also been covered by the Isle of Wight County Press.

With aspiring author