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I recently had the pleasure of visiting Boston West Academy in Boston, Lincolnshire for my first ever author visit to a school! I spent the day with Year 2 and it was a very busy one!

In the morning we started by me introducing myself and showing the children (the first out of the to classes in year 2) all the dummy books and development work that went into ‘Nipper and the Lunchbox’. I passed the books round the class and talked through the process as I went, showing them photos and life sketches of the real Nipper which they seemed to really enjoy.

I then did some live drawing and took requests. The children had me drawing all sorts of forest animals and creatures as they were going to draw/paint their own to stick on a big tree that I painted later in the day.

For the rest of the day I helped the children with their animal drawings / paintings and saw some really amazing artwork! After lunch I read the book to the whole of year 2 in their amazing woodland themed library, complete with giant teddy bear! After this they presented me with ideas they had been working on for sequels to ‘Nipper and the Lunchbox’. My personal favorite involved Richard changing career paths from toy shop owner to professional footballer and Nipper eating so much food that he exploded!

Finally we did a q and a session which was full of some great questions. One that really stumped me was ‘Which is your favorite ancient Egyptian god?’, oops!

Overall I had a really fun day and got to sell and sign some books outside the school too. Thanks so much Boston West for having me!