WBD: The Ration Book Cafe!
07 March 2010
Phew, what a week celebrating World Book Day - 9 talks in 3 days. I had a terrific time at The Mountbatten school in Romsey on Tuesday and an equally enjoyable session at the Henry Beaufort school in Winchester on the Wednesday - my thanks to all and, Phil, I hope the Ofsted inspection went smoothly! On WBD itself (Thursday) I visited Exmouth College in Devon. Until a few years ago it was the largest secondary school in Europe, and even today has well in excess of 2000 students. It's HUGE! But Lou and Iris and their colleagues made me feel really welcome and I was gobsmacked at all the preparatory work that had been put in - my books have a world war II setting and so the library was transformed with a 'bunker' complete with binoculars and telephone, paintings, aircraft models (all made by students) and many, many other items on display - brilliant. Best of all though, was the tremendous idea of holding a Ration Book Cafe - masses of home baking filled trestle tables and students - having been issued their wartime ID cards and ration coupons - were encouraged to stuff their faces, and quite naturally, most did! I was delighted too with being presented with a celebratory cake on which was printed the cover image of Death Ray, the latest in my Special Operations series - fantastic idea and tasty too. Heartfealt thanks to all those who put in such amazing effort. My visit was a 'Prize' won by the school in a competition last year run between WBD and the ReadingZone - for best ideas to promote reading. Based on the hard work put in and the enthusiasm of the students I can see why Exmouth were among the winners.
2 comments
Written by Bart Badura on 10 March 2010 at 12:54:36
hey
u came 2 our skool last week and u signed some books
could u pleese send me 2 free copies of ur new book pleese cos me and my mate cant afford any cos we blew all our mony on tickets to alton towers wich turned out to be fake
Written by Craig Simpson on 20 March 2010 at 14:36:00
Hey Bart (?Hmmm) my new book comes out in June so you've plenty of time to save up! They're only £5.99, maybe less if in a promotion. Provided of course you don't go buying any more fake tickets to Alton Towers.