Perhaps the very best way of reading a story is to have the author read it to you! Years 5 and 6 in Redmaids’ High Junior School were delighted to hear Natasha Farrant reading from her latest adventure book, The Secret of Golden Island. The girls were spellbound as the tantalising world of the book came to life in their imaginations.
Natasha’s 2020 book, The Voyage of the Sparrowhawk, won the Costa Children’s Book award, and her group of adventure stories extends to two further books: The Children of Castle Rock and The Rescue of Ravenwood.
The pupils were all eager to soak up tips about writing. They loved meeting Dobby in Natasha’s photos – the cutest chihuahua with big brown eyes and crazily floppy ears, the starting point for Sparrowhawk. Inspiration, Natasha explained, comes from anything and everything. Driving a story forward relies on the writer’s curiosity: keep asking questions, and the story will follow through the answers you find. Natasha offered a technical tip, too: she prefers to keep her writing in third person past tense, enabling her to track different points of view across her characters, positioning herself as the omniscient author.
In fact, using inventive questions, the girls began a story with Natasha, there and then, during an impromptu few minutes of creativity! What was Natasha’s cat looking at through the window? What was the cat’s interest in the soft white dove? And what happened when the cat got hungrier and hungrier…?
Natasha’s own favourite childhood reading includes The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. She remembers feeling the magic of stories for the first time as Lucy pushes her way past the fur coats to the back of the wardrobe. Natasha also loves Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson, an adventure story set on the Amazon. Currently, Natasha admires contemporary children’s writers Katya Balen, author of October, October; and Ross Montgomery, author of I am Rebel.
The recently opened fiction library has already hosted many events and activities. This term, there have been book clubs, creative writing workshops and writing competitions, with lots more to come. Year 5 librarians have shouldered their responsibilities admirably; whilst Year 3 have been making friends with new book characters, introduced to them in a dialogic reading session each week. Parents have been welcomed regularly in their very own book club celebrating novels in the 8-12 years category. Parent / daughter browsing time after school on Wednesdays and Fridays is available – come and snuggle up together with a cup of tea and a book in the Midnight Garden, there’s no better place to be on a winter’s afternoon.
