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Already we are almost in March and that means World Book Day. It is wonderful that there is so much enthusiasm around the next few weeks to celebrate books and words of all kinds.

I will be in Gullane Library, East Lothian, on Monday 1st march with classes P5-7 from Dirleton Primary school.  On Wednesday I’m off to Dunfermline High School for their WBD celebrations, speaking to S1 about SPIDER and telling them about my new book, DEAD BOY TALKING which is out in June this year.

After this I am heading further north (hopefully there won’t be too much snow) to  to Speak to Kingswells Primary school, Aberdeen, about HAMISH McHAGGIS, (Hamish himself may just make an appearance) GREYFRIARS BOBBY and THE TROJAN HORSE AND OTHER GREEK MYTHS.

Still in Aberdeen I am visiting the Central Library on Friday 5th March to speak to some invited schools about HAMISH.

So a busy start to the month.  Later on in March I will be focusing on adult creative writing , again in the north around Turriff, and then in East Lothian’s Port Seton Library, but more on that soon.

Many thanks for the lovely welcome I received recently when I visited a couple of great primary schools.

This week I was in Edinburgh Academy Junior school with all the Primary one classes and it was a a great morning.  They had based their work for some weeks around Hamish with all sorts of exciting things such as each class having a cuddly Hamish which each child could take home for one night.  There was even a diary with photographs and  short pieces describing their evening with Hamish.  They were planning a highland games day with all kinds of activities similar to those in Hamish McHaggis and the Clan Gathering  which we read together and they had designed their own tartans and there were displays about Hamish and about pine martens and hedgehogs.   We talked about stories and all the people it takes to make a Hamish book.

I visited Gargieston Primary in Kilmarnock  at the end of January and it was wonderful to see all the amazing work the children had done based around the Hamish McHaggis books and  characters.     First I visited the nursery who had a lovely display on the wall with Hamish, Angus and friends.  The children helped retell the story of Small Smooth and Grey, the baby elephant in What Colour is Love? and we talked about Hamish and his Whirry Bang and then I read them a Hamish McHaggis story.

I also visited P1 and P2 who had been working hard on their Scottish Week celebrations which included a march around the school following a piper, special shortbread and pancakes from the lovely ladies in the school kitchen.  It was fun to share the Hamish stories and to see how the children had used them to learn new Scots words and about places around Scotland.  It was a great day and Hamish enjoyed himself, too!

Spider was one of the five shortlisted books.  My congratulations to Sophie McKenzie who won with her wonderful book Bloodties, and thanks to the organisers and the amazing young people from schools in the Falkirk area, who made it such  a great day and did wonderful presentations on all five shortlisted books.

Each of the authors had to speak for a few minutes and we were encouraged to wear something red. I had so been looking forward to wearing my red shoes!

To find out more about the day I have been blogging about the RED Book Awards on my blog BOOKWORDS