Campaigning Author Alan Gibbons Visits Bow!
We were extremely fortunate to have well known author Alan Gibbons visit us to talk to the whole of Year 8 on Wednesday 16th May!
This was a highly entertaining visit as Alan amused students and staff with anecdotes about his own education and experiences as a teacher that encouraged him to start writing and led to him becoming one of the best known British children’s authors.
Alan went on to tell us how he writes in different genres but usually with an underlying theme of dealing with conflict and difficult situations and how he often uses humour to make his books more realistic. He illustrated this by describing the plots of some of his books.
At the end of his talk there was an opportunity for students to ask Alan some questions and so we found out that his first book was about a runaway pig with diarrhoea!
We also got a sneak preview of Alan’s next book, that it has a Chinese main character which is particularly appropriate as Alan is about to do a major tour of schools in China.
Finally Mrs Clark announced the competition winners who each received a signed copy of Alan’s book, ‘DARK SPACES’, written exclusively for schools. We really enjoyed this visit especially as Alan is well known for being a founding member of the ‘Campaign for the Book’ which works to recognise, promote and defend the important place of books, reading and libraries in society as a whole and in schools in particular. Just as we are doing here at Bow!
