WORDS OVERHEARD ON BOOK WEEKS by Penny Dolan

This week is Book Week so there must be plenty of authors travelling to schools near and far, ready to share their love of books and writing with all sorts of children in all sorts of schools. 

After days working alone at home, I loved doing school visits. I welcomed being inside buildings bright with childrens art works and filled with friendly, cheerful voices. I enjoyed the buzz of the children's energy, their pleasure in the sessions and all their suggestions. I admired the dedication of so many inspirational teachers and teaching assistants and Head Teachers who clearly led with both heart and mind, despite the constant pressures of Ofsted and budget management. I appreciated the fact that the school - or a particular teacher or librarian - had chosen me as their "Book Week Visitor", knowing that my visit would have involved them in extra work. 

So much about school visits was great and my thanks go out to them all. So many happy memories!

                                     

However, in truth, some moments weren't quite as rosy or pleasant and I must say that I needed to tighten my imaginary "Author" iron corset whenever I heard any of the following:

1.  "Yes, the school gates are locked now. The caretaker goes off for his breakfast between 8.30 and 9.30 and takes the key with him. You won't be able to get into that car park. You'll have to park up the road. Did you bring much stuff with you?"

2."Agh! Give me strength! It's only Wednesday and I've already had enough of this . . . .  Book Week."

 3. "As you can see, it's Dressing Up Day today and we always make a big thing of it in our school. The children get so excited and they love seeing all their teachers in fancy dress too. Just wait till you see  Miss Y dressed as Cruella de Vil. And as for Mr  Z? He's just hilarious. We were in stitches in the staff room. And will you help with the judging? What did you say your name was?"

 4. "Just to say that the school photographer is here today too so children will be going in and out of your sessions quite a lot. "

5. "Books? We've had the Mega-Stock Book Fair in all week and the children can go during breaks and bring the parents in after school. We could put a small table up  in the corridor and you could sell your books there? Though I'm not sure what we'll do about the money."

6. "Him? He was great, wasn't he, last year? I loved how he played his his guitar and made up songs and told jokes and made all the children and teachers laugh. Sigh. We couldn't afford him this year."

7. "Now, children, this lady . . . erm? Ah, Penny Dolan. She's an author and she's come here to teach you all about how to use wow words and make your writing better, so button those lips. Its time to listen very very carefully."

8.  "We've been so busy finishing . . . insert famous book title . . . that we haven't had time to read your book. We did show them the cover, didn't we? Well, I know some of us did."

9. "Sorry you've had to wait. I did ask Mr H to come and set up the IT, but he's busy with something down the other end of the school. I'm sure he'll be here soon. Anyway, here come all the children."

10. "Are you sure you're meant to be here today? I'll go and check . . ."

None of the above are really so very terrible. The words were spoken in the busy moment, often to explain one situation among many going on in the school that day. The speakers were usually trying to be helpful. Yet, on a tiring day, after a bad night's sleep and a long journey through traffic, not totally encouraging. Never mind. Tighten the iron corset. Onwards. Smile. It's showtime!

Of course, these moments were in the past, before the pandemic and zoom visits and so on. Things have probably changed for Visiting Authors now and, besides, there are useful, helpful agencies like Authors Aloud who make you feel someone is in your corner. 

Happy Book Week and Happy St  David's Day too!

                                    

  Penny Dolan

THE STORIES IN THE CUPBOARD by Penny Dolan

 

My understairs cupboard is awkward. Reaching into it meant stooping, cricking my spine and banging my head. The boxes at the back seemed forgotten, yet I knew they were there, behind the carpet sweeper, the vacuum cleaner and ironing board. A slightly uncomfortable legacy. 

                                            

This time, I edged past carrier bags hooked on one wall, swivelled away from the electricity meter on the other and tried not to hit the one dim light bulb with my head. And there they stood: several boxes, containing copies of my books. Once I would count the contents out and counted them back in again after every visit. Now the books were merely reminders and remains of an author's travelling life. It was time to think again.

                                    

I extracted the small boxes of early readers, left over from school and library visits, and sorted and matched the titles once again. Some were from a more generous era when educational publishers sent me several spare copies on publication. Other copies might have been purchased ready for a run of school visits, with me acting as middleman. 

Back then, I carried this stock because experience had taught me that there was no other way copies would be there on school visits. Non-specialist booksellers told teachers that the educational titles were complicated to order individually and the teachers told me on the day of the visit, and that is why I began taking the books along with me.

                                                      

These early reader books were a joy to work on, with their bright, colourful covers and illustrations by an interesting range of artists. Unfortunately, because the books were sold as a block package deal - six at this or that level, say, to schools - once a title had sold out, there was no chance of an individual title reprinting. 

Although my own favourite titles soon disappeared sales-wise, for a long while afterwards I could read my own copies to school groups and enjoy sharing them with children, often aided by songs and my school visit basket holding toys, interesting items and a puppet or two. Time and the last few years had rather spoilt that pleasure. Shrugging, I packed the now-orderly copies back into a bigger box, ready for their next home.

The other book boxes were a tougher task, holding multiple copies of a paperback series. I had loved working on these books and had had great fun going around the UK and beyond, talking to children about the stories and illustrations. So many good and happy memories! Even so, as I counted the copies, I was reminded about the fickle nature of publishing, the economics of school visits, and the uncomfortable publishing lesson that was hidden within the boxes. 

                                                           

Here is how it began. I was three days into a small book-tour down south, standing in a primary school hall, waiting for the next eager set of children. There was an unexpected phone call from the bookshop supplying stock for the schools. The bookseller was anxious. She had - somewhat late - rung the publisher's warehouse to order even more copies. Her helpful contact had said that the only way she could complete the order was by taking copies from the author's reserve of twenty copies. Could I phone, I was asked, and agree to that release?

I called the warehouse number. What "author copies?"  Sympathetically, she explained that a special set of twenty copies were reserved for an author when their title was about to go out-of-print . . . thud! thud! thud!. . . and not be re-issued. 

"Of course you can have a few," I said, laughing lightly as my doom descended. Sick at heart, I smiled my way through the sessions with the children, realising that, one after another, all my titles were about to disappear.   

                                                   

At the time, series were the fashionable thing with editors and publishers. Single titles had falling out of favour, except for the big names, Instead, publishers wanted authors to create their own six-or-eight-book series of character-led titles. There was a lot of hope and talk and offers of sparkly covers. Some publishing imprints developed their own concepts, collecting a small team of authors to write a new best-selling series under one fictitious but appealing name, able to come up with as many fresh paperback titles as readers were keen to collect.

The harsh reality was that, unless the first titles were seen as a success, both project and promotion stopped. With the first titles effectively frozen, any later books became harder to sell. How tough must it have been to work on when your original characters were about to go to the great bookshelf in the sky!   

                                           

Back to my small series and my personal cupboard of history. Within a short time, the publisher offered me my stock at a specially reduced rate.  My school visits were increasing then so a stash of saleable copies made sense. Didn't it?

Here is where I want to call blessings down upon all those schools and teachers who helped and encouraged children and parents to buy my books, often helping in the most practical ways. You were great! And the same to all schools and teachers doing the same now, and for any author or illustrator now visiting them.

                                              

 However (of course, there's a "however") a new bookselling army had appeared, rolling and clanking into school halls and corridors. In rolled the mighty steel cabinets of the variously-named bookfairs, both a good thing and a bad thing. The good was, they declared, getting more books into the hands of more children more cheaply. The bad thing? Ask the smaller children's bookshops, if you can still find them.

Although schools were happy to ask me in, how could one author's books count against a heavily-promoted fiesta of popular titles and sparkly stationery spread out after school in the hall each day? Not as easily as one hoped. I was not, either, someone who wanted to turn my visits into full book-plugging sessions. 

                                      

Besides, sulking about lost sales was not totally logical. Some of the profits from that Big Bulging Book Fair were paying for my Author Visit, and at an essential financial time home here. 

Nevertheless, stuck at a remote table down an adjoining corridor, I did feel dismissed, even though I smiled gaily on. I'm sure I wasn't  - and am not - the only author to face dark moments of the soul at a table surrounded by the scent of stale wellington boots and lost property.

                                                     

Consequently, my boxes of stock never diminished as fast as I hoped. "Failed, forgotten," the pages whispered whenever I reached into the cupboard for the carpet sweeper. Sigh. And time moved on. And on. 

And there were many more changes in the world of publishing, printing and bookselling.   

                                                          

At long last, after the pandemic, something clicked free in my mind and I started to wonder why I kept the books. What use were they to me? Selling them would be far too complicated and long drawn out, I knew, but suddenly it was a good time to empty that cupboard and get the books ready for departure. 

Where to? Too many for a local charity shop? Too likely to get pulped via Oxfam?  A few here and there? That would take ages! What about the local school that had taken some children's poetry books the term before? 

A reply came back that same Friday afternoon. The head teacher was eager and happy to have all the boxes. They would use copies in school or give books to their children or even let other schools know about the offer. I could hand on my stories to young readers at last.

On Monday, I loaded the car up and drove to the school. The head teacher came out smiling and carried with my labelled boxes energetically through to her office to sort through. As for me? I drove away feeling satisfied and glad the boxes were gone and free.

Now those books no longer whisper incriminatingly from the cupboard. The almost-empty space feels friendly and positive. Other people are, I hope, making use of the stories I created. After a long block of silence comes a new thought. Well, what are you going to do now? 

Penny Dolan

                                     

@pennydolan1

 

 

Show me the paperwork! by Dawn McLachlan (aka Dawn Finch)

At the start of the Pandemic, I was the new chair of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group committee (CWIG) and much of my first few months in the role was spent trying to reassure children’s writers that one day things would be back to normal. The Society of Authors did its best to support members through medical and financial crises as work vanished and things looked increasingly bleak.

Two years on and we are finally starting to see things take a turn for the better. Despite many challenges in the world of publishing sales have risen over the last two years and this has meant authors are again seeing contracts. Schools are largely open again and are booking school visits. In fact, there has been an interesting new trend in schools booking and paying for digital and online visits and this has meant great accessibility and improved diversity and inclusion as well as more potential online opportunities.

However, it is my job to act as the creaking gate in the wind and to grumble about things that concern me. My current worries centre around the increasing number of cancellations I’m hearing about. Cancellations happen, and in this fragile Living With Covid world they are happening with monotonous regularity. Obviously, this is often not the fault of those making the original event booking, but it is also not the fault of the booked author – yet it is the author who is out of pocket.

As you know from my constant posts about matters like this – I’ll say it loud again – EXPECTING TO BE PAID AND TREATED FAIRLY IS NOT BEING GREEDY.

There, I said it. Anyone accepting a booking will find themselves out of pocket with the planning and the travelling and therefore you need protect yourself. You should expect to be paid.

I used to do events that were booked just by a casual email, but failure to reply and confusion over dates meant that I started issuing contracts for each booking. At first, I was worried people would think I was being too formal or that my expectations were too high, but what I actually found was that when I began treating myself like a professional, others treated me like one too. Schools and other organisations booking me did not balk at things like contracts and deposits because they were doing exactly that with every consultant or inset trainer. Some raised a virtual eyebrow at it, but still signed. One or two schools did not sign, and I did not accept the booking. All but one of these schools later returned to me and made official bookings.

Your booking paperwork or contract should always cover cancellation clauses.

The Society of Authors has a very useful booklet covering all aspects of school bookings and on the subject of cancellation clauses in contracts they are very clear.

They suggest that cancellation fees and timings must be made clear and if the booking is conditional then this must be clarified at the outset. They suggest wording along the lines of:

- The author must be paid in full if the event is cancelled within six weeks of the event date;

- The author must be paid 50% if the event is cancelled earlier;

- Any out of pocket expenses already incurred must be reimbursed whenever the event is

cancelled.

Of course you too should have a cancellation clause covering your need to cancel. If you need to cancel for any reason (other than reasons beyond your control such as transport cancellations or pandemic restrictions) the Society would recommend that neither fee nor expenses will be charged and that the organiser will be reimbursed for any pre-paid expenses. If you cannot reach the school due to, say the sudden cancellation of train services or closure of the school due to snow, the Society suggest that you do not charge a fee for the missed session, a new date is mutually agreed and that you are reimbursed for any prebooked expenses.

The Society of Authors has a basic sample contract that you can amend to suit your needs and it is best used in conjunction with the full leaflet about school visits and you can find links to both of these documents at the foot of this article.

Sadly, it is likely that cancellations will remain a concern for us, and therefore protecting yourself and your pocket is important. To my mind a booking contract with a solid set of cancellation clauses is also another form of protection as it is a form of protection against bigotry.

It is awful to have to raise the subject of cancellations for less legitimate reasons but recent cancellations of school visits for authors Simon James Green and Savita Kalhan have given serious cause for concern. If you are a member of the Society of Authors and have been cancelled for reasons that concern you, it is well worth getting in touch.

Get your contracts written, get them signed, and then relax and enjoy the visit and do what you do best – bring joy to your readers!

 Dawn McLachlan (aka Dawn Finch) is the current chair of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group at the Society of Authors.

For a Guide for Authors Visiting Schools by the Society of Authors - click here

For sample T&C's for Events in Schools by the Society of Authors - click here

For details of further help and support offered by the Society of Authors - click here

Have a good trip By Steve Way

 

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit many schools around the country and beyond. In the vast majority of cases, it was an enjoyable and uplifting experience, particularly when both the children and the teachers were welcoming (the children were always welcoming.) However, as I am sure is the case for those of you who have done the same thing, there have been some varied and not always pleasant experiences. I once visited an infant and junior school, where I was booked to spend time in each class. I started in the infant section and was taken at the break time not to the staffroom but the caretaker’s room. Due to a dispute about smoking in the staffroom – one of the infant teacher’s smoked – the infant teachers and staff refused to use the staffroom. This put me in the difficult position at lunchtime of leaving them and heading off for what seemed like enemy territory! It certainly seemed like walking into a different school! At least – as ever – I could rely on the children! (What made the situation even more ridiculous was that individually all the teachers were very friendly too!)

The following piece is based on real experiences to some degree or another.

~~~~~

Welcome to our school Mr… Writer-thingy-wasyername. Let me make you a cup of tea before I abandon you in the staff room, dash off to a meeting and then ignore you when I get back. Ah, it appears I can’t offer you a cup of tea, or even a mug because all that tea and coffee is the tea-and-coffee-that-belongs-to-someone-and-cannot-be-used-by-anyone-else tea and coffee – and the same applies to the mugs I’m afraid. Do make yourself comfortable however – just don’t sit there… there… or there.  I wouldn’t bother talking to the staff by the way, they’re a pretty close-knit lot here and anyway, it’s their free time, isn’t it? Must dash…

 

~~~

 

Well, this is the space we’re using today. As you can see there’s lots of things going on at the moment…

KABOOOM!!!

Oh, don’t worry about that, it’s just the TA’s putting up a display using staple cannons. Now I’ve got to go and do some marking while you take the children. Oh… and there’ll be some parents turning up at irregular intervals to take readers out and some of them are going out at random times for instrument lessons or just to really upset you for no reason at all. Now the secretary’s got to bring a builder in here at some stage to discuss (in very loud voices probably) how to make this room conform to modern health and safety regulations… and don’t worry if the printers all start up – we’ve had to put them in here as they disturb us while we’re working. (Oh, and yes, as you’ll probably guess, the secretary’s stilettos are made of depleted uranium.) 

Ah, I’ve just remembered that I didn’t tell you before your visit that we have innumerable particular situations to deal with, with this particular group; half of them are autistic, half are dyslexic and the other half are having real problems with their maths for some reason… oh and one of them collects cigarette cards, which we’re really worried about… but do please try and pitch your work at the right level now I’ve let you know about all this, there’s a dear. Have you been in a school before by the way? Those smaller people are children…

You probably won’t get anything out of them by the way. They’re all pretty stupid, well that’s what we all think. There’s no need to look concerned, they all know what we think of them as we discuss their shortcomings while they’re milling around us, the little darlings.

KABOOOM!!

 

~~~

 

Well, thank you for coming… I’m sure you did your best anyway. I suppose we should have checked the CRB form that cost you so much time and money to get hold of when you arrived in the morning, shouldn’t we – we don’t want the school getting in to trouble do we? Still, you were only on your own with them for about two hours weren’t you, so I suppose that’s not too bad, is it? I’m sure we can explain that away if we have to… and anyway it’ll be you the police and the press will be hounding, so I can’t see why we have to bother really.

 

Sorry but we can’t pay you now, like we promised, because, silly us, we forgot that you’ve got to fill in all these forms packed full of questions you’re bound not to know the answer to… oh and look you have to fill out this one in Flemish… on top of that the head teacher’s on sabbatical in Tonga for a year and can’t counter-sign any of the cheques until she gets back.

 

Now toddle off home, can’t you? We want to have a nice chat in the staffroom about the negative feedback we want to write on your “Visit Assessment” form. Can I suggest you don’t request a copy?

Goodbye!

 

~~~~~

 

While I was digging about searching for the above piece, which I wrote a while ago, I came across this piece I wrote parodying the archetypal awful school trip. I had forgotten all about it and as I enjoyed it I hope you don’t mind me sharing it with you.

 

~~~~~

Name:      Parminder Soar               Date: 12th November 2011  Shortcut Primary School Trip Form.

Where did you go on your school trip? I still don’t know. Some place Miss’ boyfriend told her about. We drove past it twice because Miss hadn’t been there before either.

What equipment did you take with you? This boring worksheet. We always have to fill in this boring worksheet during our school trips, which always makes the trip much less interesting, and we know we’ve got to think of responses to the stupid questions on them. To be fair not on this trip though because Miss forgot to bring any pencils, so we had to carry it around on a clipboard all day and then fill it in for homework. Sam asked why we had to carry the worksheets and clipboards around with us even though we couldn’t fill them in, but Miss told him it made it look like we were on a proper school trip if anyone saw us.

How did you make sure you were all safe? We all kept an eye on Miss and her two helpers in case they went to the bar at lunchtime and watched us through the windows like they did last time and then nearly went home without six of us.   Mary made a list of all our names just in case Miss had forgotten the register again, though she hadn’t this time. Instead she was worried when Rajid didn’t get off the bus to go home and it took ages to convince her that he had been absent this morning but she hadn’t taken the register before we left.   John had been very clever and brought his shiny jacket some of us got for Walk to School Club and it seemed like a good idea that one of us was easier to see on a foggy day like today when we were walking beside that fast moving river. Farhana thinks that’s what probably saved Shula’s life.

What have learned from today’s trip? Well, when Mrs Kirby, one of the helpers, disappeared behind a tree to have a quick ciggy, the red-faced ranger told her all about how a smoking tab end could have started a forest fire when she dropped it in the dry leaf litter. (He told her in such a loud voice we learned about that too. He also used some words I don’t think I understand the meaning of yet.) Then the ranger noticed Shula slip into the water as he looked over towards us (that’s where Farhana says the shiny jacket came in useful) and we learned a lot about how to prevent hypo-thermy-something developing after he’d jumped in and pulled her out of the water and then covered her in warm clothes that he got each of us to lend him. (I was quite cold myself after that.)

What will you most remember from the day? It was very dramatic when the police stopped the driver of the coach after he’d made the coach wobble from side to side a bit on the way home. I think he must have been tired because the policewoman seemed to ask him if he could blow up a balloon. It looked as if he was too tired to blow up the balloon, so the policewoman and policeman kindly took him home in their car and then someone else had to come and drive the coach home the rest of the way. That meant we were quite late back but that was lovely in a way because mummy was very pleased to see me and she even cried a bit the soppy thing.

What will you most take with you from your experience? Our school trips are fantastic because they always inspire my dream of being one of the first women commandoes. After all, if I can survive our school trips, I must be able to survive anything. Tomorrow morning I’ll be in training for the next one!

 

Me, Dust and Thank Yous - Joan Lennon

 

Arizona Sandstorm 2011 photographed by Roxy Lopez 

(wiki commons)

I have an unnecessarily intimate relationship with dust. As in, the older I get the less I do it, and the less I do it the more bunged up I get when the activity of dusting is forced upon me. (Why dust when disturbed feels obliged to head straight up my nose is not clear to me, but I suspect there is some sort of magnetism involved.) 

Last week, when my ancient, second-hand, insanely heavy, ridiculously bulky printer finally died, I got a new one, which is lovely, dainty and sleek.  But in the process of extracting the old one from its niche under my desk, I had to dust back there.  And in the process of dusting back there I found some old file folders full of thank you letters.

When I first started doing school visits, a goodly number of years ago, it was the custom for teachers to make the kids write thank you letters afterwards, which were then sent on to the author.  They were lovely to receive, even when they were clearly a task rather than a pleasure for the children involved.  There were lines to write on and a formula to follow, and if you were quick about it, you got to do some decorating around the edges.  And they made me smile, then and now.

But in amongst the bundles was one that was not so tidy.  It wasn't on a template and it wasn't decorated.  It was a sheet of slightly crumpled A4 with the words 'I love you! Nicola' scrawled across one side.

That one made my heart twist.  I don't know which school sent it on to me, or exactly when the visit was.  But based on the dates of the other letters in the folder, she will now be old enough to have little Nicolas of her own, and we would certainly not recognise each other if we passed in the street, masked or otherwise.  I will tuck her letter and the others away, to be rediscovered another day.  But until then, thank you, Nicola!  You keep me going, dust and all.

Max Slevogt Sandstorm in the Libyan Desert 1914 

(wiki commons)

Fair Isle February - Joan Lennon

I'm on Fair Isle, the UK's most remote inhabited island, for a month's writing residency.  And as part of that, I've had the pleasure of working with Fair Isle Primary School's 4 pupils, ranging from P3 to P7.  Last week we wrote short stories, and this week it's riddle poems, and both weeks it's been a delight.

I have been overwhelmed by sea and sky and weather and so many more colours than I can find words for.  

My brain is full of images.  I will be writing about this experience for many years to come!



Joan Lennon's blog.
Joan Lennon's YA novel Silver Skin 
(set in Orkney - at least it's close!)

Learning from Children by Claire Fayers

I don’t have children or close family with kids so most of the year I’m trapped in a world of adult conversation where I rely on friends’ children to keep me on my toes. This time of year is a special treat for me – the chance to visit schools and talk to hundreds of children in the space of a few weeks. This year, the schools have been especially welcoming. I walked into several to see displays like this one.

I will often start my sessions with some improvised story-telling. We decide where the story is going to happen, I pull a couple of children out to role-play the characters and then we see how long we can keep the story going.

It can be a little risky. You never quite know what's going to happen. One child might freeze with stage-fright and refuse to speak. Another will talk without pause and you have to cut in to give other people a chance. You may need to prompt with questions to get the story moving. (You're in a spaceship - what do you see?) The main challenge is to keep the story, and the group, under control with 20+ children yelling ideas at you. 

As usual this March, the results were weird and wonderful. A group of aliens on the moon found a robot covered in coloured buttons; a psychopath stalked a girl on a deserted beach and as he was about to kill her she vanished; a boy received a giant parcel containing Big Ben.

A bit of exaggerated acting helps, especially if you're bad at it. 

The children will usually join in - the dancing moon robots of Shrewsbury were a sight to behold.

I love the chaotic creativity that can happen when there are no rules, no need to worry about writing anything down or getting the words right. Children come up with the most fantastic ideas and will throw anything into a story to see what happens. 

A teacher asked me if I ever use any of the children’s ideas. My answer was no. They are not my ideas, not my stories to tell. But I really hope the children will write them. And I hope I can channel their creativity next time I'm working on a new draft.

Finally, the questions

Every session has to end with a Q&A, and improvised storytelling is good practice for this as you have to make up your answers very quickly. 

As well as the usual questions (‘How old are you?’, ‘How much do you earn?’) I had two interested ones I'd never been asked before:

How do you end a story?

and

Why do you write about children?

I'd be interested to know other people's answer to those.

School Visits by Paul May

It’s World Book Day this week. All over the UK and, who knows, maybe all over the world, children’s authors are abandoning their typewriters and keyboards and pens and paper in order to spend hours in trains and cars and hotel rooms and airbnbs and, eventually, in schools.  

Many of those authors will be heading for Primary Schools.  I know a bit about Primary Schools.  I was a teacher in several of them for more than thirty years, and when I hear authors tell their stories of how they've been treated on their visits, from the wonderful to the horrific, I am never surprised.  So, especially for those of you who are new to the experience of school visits, here are a few thoughts.

Let’s assume that you have read the Society of Authors guide for authors visiting schools and libraries, and have helpfully pointed whoever is arranging your visit to the guide for schools organising an author visit.  Let’s not assume they have read that guide!  It may be that the person arranging the visit is a passionate fan of children’s literature, perhaps even of your work, and they have told everyone in the school you are coming and they are all equally enthusiastic.  The children will all have been reading your books and will be brimming over with excitement and anticipation.  There might be banners, flowers, champagne on the table in the staff room . . .

But it may also be that a poor young NQT who has not yet learned how to say 'no' has had the job dumped on them out of the blue, two weeks before WBD. They have never read your books and possibly had never heard of you until a colleague or friend said, ‘Oh, you could try X.  I’ve heard they sometimes visit schools.’  In this case probably most of the children will not have read your books either, and the staff will definitely never have heard of you, but they might be glad of a few minutes to catch up with their marking or data-entry, which they will do while you are doing whatever it is you do with their class. The teaching assistants will probably see this as a chance for a chat, too.   

This, I think, is the most annoying thing of all, but it might make you feel better to know that they do it to supply teachers too, routinely, and even, occasionally, to 'proper' teachers.  Which reminds me of the day when I was covering a Year 4 class for a colleague.  I'd dismissed the children at the end of the day when a woman dressed all in black, dripping with gold jewellery, and sporting bleached blond hair and a deep orange tanning-studio tan stormed into the classroom demanding to speak to the teacher.  'I'm the teacher,' I said.  She paused, then looked me over very slowly from head to foot and then back up to my head again, taking in slightly untidy hair, open-necked shirt and not-very-shiny shoes. 'You're not a proper teacher,' she told me.  This may be why teachers all wear lanyards nowadays.

Illustration by Thomas Henry from William Holds the Stage 

I think Richmal Crompton must have visited a few schools in her time. William fans among you may remember this, from William Holds the Stage.   

“It was an old boy of William’s school, called Mr Welbecker, who with well-intentioned but mistaken enthusiasm offered a prize to the form that should act a scene from Shakespeare most successfully . . . The headmaster and the staff received his offer with conventional gratitude but without enthusiasm.  Several senior members of the staff were heard to express a wish that that fool Welbecker could have the trouble of organizing the thing himself, adding that he jolly well wouldn’t do it more than once.  The junior staff expressed this more forcibly by saying that the blighter ought to be hung.”

Unfortunately William’s class, IIIA, are without a teacher on the morning Mr Welbecker arrives unannounced in school ‘armed with innumerable copies of his article on Shakespeare,’ and offering to give a lecture to the school.  The headmaster suggests that Mr Welbecker give his lecture to IIIA.

“ ‘It’s young Brown and that set,’ murmured the second master warningly.  The headmaster’s expression brightened still further.  So might a man look who was sending his bitterest enemy unarmed and unsuspecting into a lion’s den. 

‘Splendid!’ he said heartily, ‘splendid!  I’m sure they’ll find your lecture most interesting, Welbecker.  Good morning.  I hope to see you, of course, before you go.’

Richmal Crompton had definitely visited schools herself.  This headmaster will almost certainly be in a meeting when the author leaves.  She proceeds to demonstrate how not to talk to a young audience.

“A sudden silence—a silence of interest and surprise—greeted the entry of Mr Welbecker into the classroom of IIIA.

‘Now boys,’ he said breezily, ‘I want to give you a little talk about Shakespeare, and I want you to ask me questions freely, because I’m—er—well, I’m what you might call an expert on the subject.  I’ve written a little book . . . It isn’t everyone who can write a book, you know, is it?’

‘I’ve written a book,’ put in William nonchalantly.”

For anyone who hasn’t encountered this story, which is in William the Pirate, I recommend seeking out Martin Jarvis’s reading on Just William: Volume 3 (BBC).  I remember listening to the tape one sunny afternoon while driving around Los Angeles with five children and three adults all laughing so hard we had to pull the car over so we could recover. 

The thing to remember when you go into a school is that, as with any organisation, there is stuff going on that you know nothing about. When there is no tea/coffee/mug for visitors there has probably been some terrible row over tea money, or dishwashing.  When the staff seem unhelpful or rude it may be that they see the parachuting-in of a visiting author as an implicit (or explicit) criticism from the management of their (allegedly) dull and unimaginative teaching.  This happened to me when an ex-colleague who had been appointed head of a large, failing school, booked me to do an author visit just as she attempted to introduce new approaches to lesson-planning, assessment, behaviour management—you name it.  The teachers were not welcoming.  I definitely felt I had been sent 'unsuspecting into a lion’s den'.

I have also committed one of Mr Welbecker’s errors.  After I retired I was doing a bit of supply teaching and happened to mention to a class that I had written books.  “My dad writes books,” one of the children told me.  I probably said something like, ‘Who’s your dad, then?’  I won’t tell you who his dad was, but he was about as famous as an author gets.

Schools are very odd places, and there are inevitably all kinds of cliques and rivalries and antagonisms going on.  But there is an important clue to let you know what you are in for.  You can tell a lot about a school by the greeting you get from the office staff when you walk through the door. No half-decent headteacher would allow the first encounter parents and visitors have to be with a surly, grumpy, unfriendly, impatient person.  

So, if you arrive at your school to be greeted by a cheerful, friendly smile from the office staff, and they’re expecting you and they look after you like royalty, you’ll probably have a great time.  If they have no idea who you are and make you feel you’re just one more burden they have to put up with, then watch out!

And if you want to know more about the internal workings of the English Primary School you cannot do better than to read The Harpole Report by J L Carr, first published in 1972.  It may be dated in some ways, but it also somehow gets to the heart of what goes on.  And it’s very funny. The story is told from many points of view.  As the blurb on the back says; 'Everyone in the school system has something to write about, not least the school caretaker.'

One of the narrators has this to say on the first page: 'As I have put this business into some sort of order, my sympathy and admiration has warmed not only to several of those caught up in it, but to others unknown to me; isolated little bands, here and there clinging to scarcely tenable positions amidst the dust of battle in the front lines of English Education.'  

Good luck with all those visits.  I will most likely be on my allotment!

Paul May's website is here.  He also has a blog about education, bicycles, trees and various other things called AS IN THE LONG AGO.

Why Authors Enjoy Visiting Schools by Jo Franklin

The weeks surrounding World Book Day are very busy for children's authors. Many will be fully booked with school visits for three weeks, followed by three weeks recovery time as they catch every cold, flu and vomiting virus that have been incubating and mutating in schools all year.

Schools are keen to get an author in on the actual day - 1st March in 2018 - in the hope of ...

Hmm ... what do schools want from an author visit? And why do authors want to visit schools?

Jo Franklin

I've never been a teacher or a school librarian so I can't really answer for what schools want. I hope they want some or all of the following things :

• Their children to be inspired to read a book that they may have never heard of before because they are able to put a face to the author's name on the cover
• To meet a role model of someone who has carved out a career in the arts. Many children's authors are female, but by no means all. A woman or man with a successful career in the arts - I hope that is an important message for both girls and boys to hear.
• The life blood of the author - books, writing and reading - is so strong that it spreads through the school like a wild fire.
• That children realise that reading and writing are important, special, fantastic and more fun than You Tube videos.

These are certainly the things I want to leave behind when I visit a school. I love meeting my readers and talking about books.

Children's authors spend a lot of time in their writing caves with their own thoughts and fountain pens. The rest of the time they seek out other writers to talk about how their writing is going (or not going) - word count, frustrations with publishers, crazy requests from schools!

Talking to children about books is particularly special though. We write because we love it and we want readers to love our writing. Children's authors have a passion for words, sentences and stories. Most of us don't have much time for grammar with long meaningful names (fronted adverbial, no thanks). We love libraries and our homes are stuffed with books. We live, breathe and eat words every day.

Authors Love Books!

So schools, if you invite an author into your school (whether around World Book Day or another time) allow them to inspire your children. 

• Make a display on your noticeboard. 
• Tell the children they are meeting a celebrity.  
• Buy the author's books for your library. 
• Beg the author to hang around at the end of the day to sign books the children have bought. 
• Please don't treat us a nuisance, a supply teacher or a money grabbing drain on your scarce financial resources. We don't visit schools to make money. We need to be paid because we are skilled professionals. We visit schools to share the love of words. 

This year on World Book Day 1st March 2018 I am visiting Harris Primary Merton to talk about Help I'm a Genius and what it is like to be a full time writer. I can't wait!

Jo Franklin

www.jofranklinauthor.co.uk