Authors visit Strand

On Wednesday, Year 6 were treated to a visit from Chris Smith, author of the Kid Normal series and

Frankie Best Hates Quests. Most importantly for Year 6, Chris has also written a series of updated

Famous Five books inspired by Enid Blyton’s novels which links perfectly with their current English

focus. ‘The New Famous Five’ is set years after the original adventures and sees the descendants of

The Five take on new capers in and around Kirran Island. After hearing all about the author's

inspiration and writing process, Year 6 asked brilliant questions and Chirs was extremely impressed

with how thoughtfully they have engaged with the debate around the modernisation of classical

literature. Year 6 now has plenty of ideas and inspiration with which to get cracking on crafting their

own spiffing adventure stories next week. Watch this space for galoshes, smugglers and lashings of

ginger beer! Thank you to Mrs Habershon for organising Chris’s visit for us.

On Thursday, all year groups were treated to a session with author and poet A.F.Harrold, organised

by Mr Thorne and Mrs Jones. With such a love of children’s literature amongst the staff at Strand, we

are always fortunate enough to have many great authors and poets visit us, but A.F.Harrold will be

remembered for a long time as being one of the funniest ever and totally enthralling. Whilst delivering

his poems to captivated audiences, Ashley had children rolling in the aisles with his ad libs and

stories about previous school visits. From discussing the endless surprising uses of sausages when

stranded at sea to rapping about midnight feasts, his session was completely entertaining and has

given the children plenty of inspiration to get writing their own bizarre yet brilliant poems. If you have

not yet purchased one of A.F. Harrold’s books yet, you will be able to next week directly from the

office.