Most of last week was spent in libraries around Sheffield, celebrating Shakespeare Week. I visited Chapeltown on Monday, and then I hopped on a tram and a bus to Stocksbridge on Tuesday, finishing off (until Ecclesall next week) at the Central Children’s Library on Wednesday. And I was met at each of them by a sellout crowd of terrific young writers (and illustrators). We talked about Shakespeare and (my favourite bit about him) was the range of things he wrote about and the range of characters in them: love stories, tragedies, monsters, fairies, kings and queens and witches…
And we wrote. We wrote a lot and it was brilliant. And we illustrated too – as you’ll see, there are some really fantastic cauldrons and potions and spells…
Massive thanks for everyone’s help – to mums and dads and brilliant library people. It was a brilliant few days, brilliant to see some familiar faces, brilliant to meet new people but, best of all, it was brilliant seeing so many young writers having fun writing.