Catching Words is AMAZING

Beyond thrilled to open my postbox today and see that the marvellous books that I helped create during the Catching Words Project had arrived. Five different classes, five very different stories, all weirdly wonderful and all a total joy to help bring to life.

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The first school that I worked with was Woodgrange Infants. Willow Class created The Unstoppable Robot - "the story of Messy Silver Rocky, a good but messy little robot who lived in a secret lair under an old junk yard".

​In contrast the other class, Hawthorn, wrote: The Legend of the Two Battling Phoenixes, their own explanation on how the sun and the moon came to be.

Moving up to Year 3 with a class at Sandringham Primary School, the terrifying Evil Queen was created, literally bursting out the story of Alina and the Book of Monsters. 

Some of the children in Year 2 at Altmore Infant School wrote Brilliant Imagining Raven, the funny, sweet story of Brilliant, one of the Tower of London Ravens, who gets lost in her own powerful imagination. 

Last, but not least came The Repeated War, a sinister ghost story created by a class at St James' CE Primary. To lighten the dark story was  Christina, a charming, brightly-coloured fish, as big as a shark, who could communicate by making word bubbles. 

As a creator of children's books it is thrilling to work so closely with a class, capturing characters, settings, story and plot ideas and turning them into a real book that the children treasure.

The Catching Words Project is available to any KS1 and KS2 class based in or around London and, because it is subsidised by the Man Charitable Trust and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, it's inexpensive for schools to take part.  

In summary, the class work with a poet, a story teller and a writer to play with words and ideas. The process is overseen by a Discover Story Builder and celebrated with the presentation of their own class book at the Discover Children's Story Centre in Stratford, East London.

You'd not be surprised to know how rewarding and worthwhile the Catching Words Project is for everyone who takes part (just look how excited I am) not least the children themselves.

To find out more about the project and how you might get your school involved please visit the Catching Words Project page on the Discover Children's Story Centre Website: Find Out More

I'm delighted and honoured to be asked back next year and can't wait to create more magic stories. Love, love, love Catching Words.