Visiting schools and meeting Electrigirl!

Posted on by Jo Cotterill

Last week was very busy. I spent a day and a half in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, talking to children from three schools as part of the Tower Hamlets Book Award (the awards ceremony is this Friday). On the Tuesday, I had a gap of a couple of hours in between schools, so I went to the wonderful Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. I’d never been before and it’s WONDERFUL; I could have spent all day in there because there was so much to look at! I was particularly excited to see my own favourite childhood toys in there…

The Museum of Childhood is in a wonderful big space with lots of room for kids to run around and a lovely cafe at the end!
This made me yelp in recognition! We had one of these when I was a child
My nursery school had a wonderful rocking horse just like this
My parents still have our Fisher Price Town and my own children have played with it
I believe I envied a friend at school who owned the Ballerina Sindy…
I still own a teddy bear that looks remarkably like this one
My Little Pony WAS my childhood, basically. I was obsessed. This is Cherries Jubilee who had a tendency to fall over because she wasn’t weighted correctly
As well as all my childhood favourites, the Museum has a massive collection of dolls’ houses, and I loved this huge display of them, all with little lights on!

Many thanks to the Tower Hamlets Schools’ Library Services for supporting my school visits last week – and I look forward to meeting some of you again this Friday!

On Wednesday evening I set off again, this time to Portsmouth, for events linked to the Portsmouth Book Award supported by their SLS (oh, it makes me SO SAD that we no longer have a SLS in Oxfordshire; they all do SUCH fantastic work). I spoke to over 600 children in three events and had a wonderful time! One school had even dressed up as book characters – and I met two familiar ones…

Julia as Electrigirl, with electrocuted hair!
And Matteo had come as Joe!

It was good to slump at the weekend after all my leaping about! This week I’m off to Nottingham to talk at a librarian conference before heading back down south for the Tower Hamlets Book Awards. And over the weekend, I had a little tiny idea for a new story…

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