Posted on: November 24th 2017
On Monday 20th November, we were visited by children’s author Alexander Martin - better known to me as ‘Dad’. He began his day with a presentation to Senior Prep. He talked to the children about his books, which are detective stories about cats that behave just like humans: they drive cars, use mobile phones, play computer games and even eat fish and chips with a knife and fork!
Mr Martin told the children that he gets many of his ideas from real life things that happen to him or his friends. He recounted one rather unfortunate story about me aged 7 or 8 in a hotel restaurant and a bowl of pea soup. Let’s just say that what I ate, didn’t stay eaten for long! To my eternal embarrassment, that tale has been read by over 10,000 people as it appears in his first book, 'Stanley Smartpants and the Mackerel Robberies'.
He followed this up with successful writing workshops with Forms 4, 5 and 6. The children looked at using ambitious vocabulary and sentence structure to write character descriptions and had a go at creating their own cat characters with great success.
In the afternoon, Mr Martin repeated the process with Junior Prep and the children found it very stimulating, writing some amazing descriptions. It was an inspirational day all round.
It’s not too late to get hold of personally signed copies of the any of his books. Just drop me an email jharman@norfolkhouseschool.org and I can make the necessary arrangements.
Jane Harman
