Young Author Book Reading and Creative Writing Workshop

February saw an exciting event for pupils from 6 local primary schools with a creative writing workshop and activity-filled afternoon with young author Oscar Lawson.

There were puzzle booklets, story writing prompts, and colouring-in supervised by Oscar and friends (also Eton students). 

Background

Oscar, who recently published his book "Tiger: the secret intelligence group looking for a brilliant mind" for children aged 8-13, has been visiting a few schools to talk about being a young author, the creative writing process, and to inspire budding young writers. It was published in aid of the Honeypot children's charity, supporting young carers, and money from the sale of every copy with go towards helping the most vulnerable in our society today.

Impact

Children and their parents (over 70 in total) bought signed copies of Tiger, and heard an extract from the book as Oscar talked about using flashbacks and dialogue to keep your writing exciting. All the children had a go at writing their own stories in one page or less, and they came up with creative ideas from "The mad gorilla" to elaborate arctic trek journeys. Oscar says "I loved it when the children told me they want to write their own books now, and also when a couple of them came up with acronyms for their stories when they heard TIGER was an acryonym for the secret organisation the protagonist goes to work for. It's also great fun doing Q&A as you never know what you might be asked - I had to try and explain about everything from publishing contracts to what an orangutan was - I went with 'a big orange monkey' ". The parents appreciated the afterschool activities and refreshments and the winning stories and puzzlers won fuzzy bee prizes from Honeypot.