Schools Programme

Just think – a published children’s author could be coming to your school to inspire your pupils with their love of reading and writing and putting your school on the map of the book world. There’s nothing quite like it for upping the WOW factor for English lessons!   So why not sign up to the Appledore Book Festival?

Here’s how it works

1/ Express an interest by emailing education@appledorebookfestival.co.uk
We will contact you to explain the booking procedure and the Event Contract and send you the briefing pack.

2/ At the start of each year we hold an evening planning meeting with the designated contacts of every school. The purpose of the meeting is for us to explain how the schools programme works. It is also a chance for schools to identify what kind of author they are hoping to host (age-group/genre etc.) Although we can’t guarantee to meet requests for authors we’ll do our best!

3/ If you arrange for an author event, you will be given instructions for ordering the author’s books, which will be delivered to you in early September. These can be sold to the students prior to the author’s arrival. The author will be prepared to sign the students’ books after the event.

4/ The author will be accompanied by a minder/driver from the Festival and in some cases a member of the Schools Library Service will come to help out. The author will normally present one talk to the selected audience but if necessary can do two talks and stay for the day.

And the bottom line?

Well, they do say that “quality doesn’t come cheap”. A professional writer will often cost in excess of £500, including expenses, travel and accommodation costs and VAT – but because the Appledore Book Festival has found sponsorship for the school events the cost to a school is limited to a flat fee of £150 per talk payable to the Appledore Book Festival. This means, for example, that the cost of one talk for 200 pupils is less than one-third the cost of organising your own author visit.

For the Festival there is great benefit in reaching thousands of local children who may not be able to get to see the authors at the public events. For your school it will be a very special day that will live forever in the minds of your pupils.

Appledore Book Festival is more – yes, even more – than a fantastic celebration of words and writing in one of England’s loveliest locations. It’s also an educational event – a catalyst for joyful reading for thousands of local children through the schools programme. In 2011 we held 40 events in 22 schools. The authors visited local schools and presented talks and workshops that enthraled and inspired children. Below are some of the authors who took part in 2011.

Events for Schools Sponsored by Scholastic

With seven Grubtown Tales under his belt, and a whole host of other books, both fiction and non-fiction, hidden about his person, no wonder Roald Dahl Funny Prize-winning author Philip Ardagh needs such a big, bushy beard to hide them all. In this action-packed event, with plenty of audience participation and all-round silliness, the two-metre-high author talks about everything from why he writes and how he writes, to where he gets his ideas from and why he loves ducks.

Tim Bowler

Tim Bowler has written twenty books for teenagers and won fifteen awards, including the Carnegie Medal for River Boy. He has been described by the Sunday Telegraph as “the master of the psychological thriller” and by the Independent as “one of the truly individual voices in British teenage fiction”. His most recent works include Starseeker, Frozen Fire, Bloodchild and the eight-book BLADE series. His new novel Buried Thunder came out in February 2011. He lives with his wife in a small village in Devon and his workroom is an old stone outhouse known to friends as ‘Tim’s Bolthole’.

James Carter

James Carter is a prize-winning children’s poet, guitarist and educational writer. A former lecturer in Creative Writing at Reading University, James has been running writing workshops from Infant to Primary to Secondary to Undergraduate level for the past 20 years. James is the author of ten popular poetry titles (Macmillan/Walker Books) and five critically acclaimed creative writing books for teachers (Taylor & Francis), and he recently contributed material for a BBC poetry series for children. Sponsored by South West Water

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Terence Frisby

Terence Frisby is a talented playwright, author, actor, director and producer. His most famous play There’s a Girl in my Soup was made into an award winning film starring Goldie Hawn and Peter Sellers. At the School events, he will be talking about his latest book Kisses on a Postcard, which will be running as a Stage Musical at the Queens Theatre Barnstaple at the time of the Appledore Book Festival.

Alan Gibbons

Alan Gibbons is an award winning children’s author. Winner of the Blue Peter Book Award ‘The Book I couldn’t put down’ and eight other awards, Alan has also been shortlisted twice each for the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Carnegie Medal. He will talk about his fifty published stories, describe what childhood influences led to his writing career and answer pupils’ questions. In his talk there will be lots of jokes and anecdotes.

Emily Goldern

Ever wondered who dreams up the stories for bedtime?  Join illustrator Emily Golden on a trip across the universe to find out!  Discover how Emily gets her ideas for her drawing, meet some crazy characters from her book, The Loon on the Moon, and even have a go at drawing your very own alien!  Imagination is the key in this fun-packed, interactive event.

Ally Kennen

Ally Kennen, the award-winning author of teen thrillers Beast, Bedlam, Berserk and Quarry, tells about how she gets her inspiration for her novels, exactly what lengths she will go to to research her plots and what she loves about writing exciting fiction for teens.

Tanya Landman

Tanya is the author of the Flotsam and Jetsam trilogy for younger children, which is set on a small beach in North Devon. After writing Apache and The Goldsmith’s Daughter – award winning novels for young adults – Tanya turned to crime. There are eight Poppy Fields books currently in print (starting with Mondays are Murder, which won the Red House Book Award) with two more titles planned in the series.

Nicola Morgan

Nicola Morgan is the author of many critically acclaimed titles for older children and young adults, including Chicken Friend, The Highwayman’s Footsteps, The Highwayman’s Curse, Mondays Are Red, The Passionflower Massacre, Know Your Brain, The Leaving Home Survival Guide and most recently, Wasted. Her novels Fleshmarket and Sleepwalking both won Scottish Art Council prizes. Nicola lives in Edinburgh.

Ali Sparks

Ali Sparkes grew up in Southampton and despite some exciting months in London and even more exciting months in Lowestoft (where she really experienced life on the edge), still lives in Southampton today, with her husband and two sons. She has worked as a singer, journalist, broadcaster, magazine editor and the spangle-clad assistant to a juggling unicyclist (frighteningly, there is photographic proof). Ali currently has 14 children’s fiction titles published by Oxford University Press including the bugtastic S.W.I.T.C.H. series and her award-wining Frozen in Time. Supported by Oxford University Press

Luisa Plaja

Luisa Plaja is the author of three books for teens; Split by a Kiss, Extreme Kissing and Swapped by a Kiss. She lives in Devon with her husband and two young children. Luisa is a huge fan of teenage chick-lit, and loves reading, writing and pretending she can do things she can’t, like ice skating and telling jokes.

Jeremy Strong

Katherine Rundell

With a mixture of stories about life in Africa, and thoughts about how to make those stories come alive on the page. Katherine talks about the rules she gives herself for writing (‘if all else fails, tie yourself to your deskchair’) and the children and her plot a story, and write a poem. Katherine proves that writing is a thing that everyone can do “as simple as day-dreaming during maths class”, and that reading makes the world look brighter, and wilder, and infinitely more exciting.

Steve Voake

Steve Voake is Senior Lecturer in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University and the critically-acclaimed author of The Dreamwalker’s Child, The Starlight Conspiracy and Blood Hunters (Faber & Faber). His latest book, Dark Woods, is a thriller set in the wilds of Montana. Steve lives with his family in Somerset. James Carter is a prize-winning children’s poet, guitarist and educational writer. A former lecturer in Creative Writing at Reading University, James has been running writing workshops from Infant to Primary to Secondary to Undergraduate level for the past 20 years. James is the author of ten popular poetry titles (Macmillan/Walker Books) and five critically acclaimed creative writing books for teachers (Taylor & Francis), and he recently contributed material for a BBC poetry series for children. Sponsored by South West Water