Children’s Writer Visits Knowsley Hey

Award winning children’s author Alan Gibbons has been firing up the imaginations of Knowsley Hey pupils with a series of creativewriting workshops. Alan was the winner of the Blue Peter Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

The pupils explored a range of creative writing forms, producing work that will be posted on the Internet. Huyton Today reporter Joseph Inglesby asked Alan about what had inspired him to become an author.

“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was an eight year old schoolboy. I have never doubted that I would become a writer because I have always loved storytelling. I did have some inspirational teachers who really encouraged me,” said Alan.

Alan’s book Shadow of the Minotaur was so popular with young readers that it beat Harry Potter to the Blue Peter award in the ‘Book I Couldn’t Put Down Category’. Some of Alan’s enthusiasm and success seems to have rubbed off on Hey’s young writers.

“I really enjoyed working with Alan,” said year 7 pupil, Nicola Soutar. “He gave me lots of ideas for my writing and showed me how to improve my work,” she added.

In fact, Alan was so impressed with the work produced by Hey’s pupils that he has decided to use some of it as exemplar material as he works with other pupils in other Merseyside schools.