Bath Kids Lit Fest weekend

In keeping with the Regency theme of our recent blogs,  Templar's lovely authors and illustrators had a great first weekend at this year's Bath Festival of Children's Literature. 

On Saturday afternoon it was a Graphic Novel Workshop with Emma Dodd and Kelly Gerrard (aided and assisted by Martin Brown, of Horrible Histories fame) and children, adults, librarians and Bath Festival volunteers got down to the serious business of making their own graphic novels.  This time Emma and Kelly also brought along some blank booklets for the children to really develop their ideas.  We had two hours and it flew by!  Amazing ideas as ever from the children - one had a brilliant pencil case hero, chasing after rogue rulers and evasive erasers.  Space, aliens, robots all appeared as their imagination showed no limits.

 Sunday morning at the beautiful Holburne Museum for a masterclass with Grahame Baker-Smith.  What a wonderful experience for all those who came along - again, a full house!  Grahame showed us his early sketches and notebooks for Farther, along with paintings and revealed how he used photo shop to create his magical images.  The adults were just as fascinated by his creative processes and we all loved looking at his original artworks.  We were also treated to a sneak preview of the new book, A Winter's Child - so looking forward to seeing it published. 

Around lunch time it was Dave Lowe's chance to show off Stinky - his genius hamster, but beforehand he had to have  a publicity shot of Stinky and the Puffin Club puffin called Stuffin ... think Stinky and Stuffin weren't too sure of each other.

Dave's event was a sell out - which is brilliant for an author  (he lives in Australia) with his first book just out.  What a delightful event - the children were in stitches over the antics of Stinky and came up with all sorts of ideas for what Stinky could do next.  Dave wasn't too sure about a football themed story, saying Stinky would make a rotten goal keeper ...

 And finally, it was Simon Bartram's turn to raise the Guildhall roof with his Bob's 10th Birthday event.  As ever, the children roared and shouted and pointed out every alien to a somewhat bemused Simon, who kept up the mantra that "aliens don't exist" for a while, until he got shouted down.

It was lovely to hear him read out The Moontree Mystery, with the last page making everyone go "aaahhh".

Thanks to all at Bath for their help and support - and as ever to team Templar for lots of laughs and fun.