Celebrating Young Writers with Chris Riddell at Wimbledon BookFest

We were delighted to take part in the Wimbledon BookFest Young Writers’ Competition prize-giving on 20th September, at an event hosted by former children’s laureate, and renowned children’s author, Chris Riddell.

Over 350 local children took part in the competition, which challenged budding authors to write a story on the theme of ‘Monsters’.

Before announcing the winners Chris, author of the acclaimed Goth Girls series, read from his latest book Goth Girl And The Sinister Symphony. It was wonderful to watch the audience of 500 schoolchildren watch, captivated, as he brought to life his characters – including Mademoiselle Badoit, Tailor Extremely-Swift, and Donald Ear-Trumpet – with a series of live drawings accompanied by music from the Jigsaw Players.

Nicky Cox, Editor of First News came along to interview Chris and take questions from the children in the audience.

The winners and runners-up of the Young Writers Competition received a BookFest goody bag and have their work published in Monster – the Young Writers Competition anthology.

Give a Book were delighted to provide copies of Goth Girl and the Sinister Symphony to a selection of the schools attending. What a great event and a brilliant way to kick off the Wimbledon Bookfest!

 

Wimbledon BookFest has two sides to its work – BookFest which runs from 4 – 14th October, and WordUp – a year round education programme with local schools which supports literacy, reading and creative writing.

This year’s Festival schools programme includes authors Katherine Rundell, David Almond and Tom Fletcher. There’s also a great children’s programme planned for the main Festival itself, including appearances from Michael Rosen, Greg James and Chris Smith, Francesca Simon and Alom Saha.

Tickets and full programme are available here.