To celebrate World Book Day, the Guardian Education Centre and Kings Place Music Foundation invited children from Argyle, Hanover and New End primary schools to meet two famous children's authors, who entertained the year 5 and 6 groups with extracts from their World Book Day £1 books and answered questions about their experiences as writers of children's fiction.
Andrew Cope talked about how he came up with the idea for his Spy Dog series and Michael Lawrence was interviewed about his Jimmy McCue series of books. Each author has written a special story for World Book Day and the children were able to exchange their World Book Day £1 book token for a copy.
Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's books editor, introduced the sessions. To coincide with World Book day the Guardian has launched its children's books website designed and curated by children, for children.
Listen to Andrew Cope talking at the event about how he came up with the idea for the Spy Dog Stories.
The event was lots of fun and hopefully inspired the children to keep reading and writing stories.
Year 5 & 6 pupils from Hanover school sent us a report about meeting the authors.
We had a brilliant time at the Guardian last Monday, 28th February. We walked to Kings Place and met Andrew Cope, the writer of Spy Dog, and Michael Lawrence who wrote Jiggy McCue. Andrew Cope told us the story of when he was a kid, this girl at school always said "Maths is BORING!" "English is BORING!" 30 years later he met her in Tesco and she still said everything was BORING! He also told us that the Spy Dog books were based on his real dog Lara, because she always has one ear up as if she's listening, even when she is asleep. She is always exhausted when he gets home so he imagined that she had been out stopping baddies all day, every day. Michael Lawrence told us that he had written 40 books so far – that's a lot of books! He even edits his books after they have been published, and crosses out bits he doesn't like to make them better!
We each got a voucher for a new book, and the writers signed them especially for us, and for children at Hanover.
