An Envelope Full of Lovely Things!

This week, a fat, A4 envelope dropped onto the mat. On the front was a dragon, (looking very like the one in Dragon's Dinner...) bearing down upon my house. Yikes. 

The envelope was addressed to Lynne Chapman, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Well! When I turned it over, a great big bear pulled a rather rude face at me:

The envelope was bursting with lovely, enthusiastic letters from the Otters Class at St Patrick's primary school in Barnsley, where I visited about 6 weeks ago and read stories to the children.

We did lots of drawing together too. The teacher's covering letter said that many of the children had cited their 'drawing aliens' workshop with me as their 'Best Activity of the Year'. She also said that, since my visit, she had noticed lots of the children reading my books to one another in their free time. Isn't that lovely? It's so good to get this kind of feedback. It makes you realise how worthwhile the school visits are. Getting kids fired up about reading and creativity at that age is invaluable stuff. 

Many of the letters had drawings on them, so I could tell which books I had read. I'm pretty sure the one above must be the itchy gorilla from An Itch to Scratch (though he has grown a tail and evolved into a monkey). Hayden's letter, below, had three different characters: the Bears on the Stairs little bear, in his stripy shorts, the Class Two at the Zoo anaconda, now with added sting, and I recognised the monster from Rocky and the Lamb too, leaping out of his magic box:

Class Two at the Zoo was clearly the favourite though. That book has always been a winner (a HUGE thanks to Julia Jarman for that one, and many of my other favourites, come to that). I love this illustration of the anaconda baby in his spotty bib. the punk hairdo is definitely a winner too!

Thanks too to Miss/Mrs Phillips, for organising the letters, and of course to all the children in Otters (some of whom had very impressive handwriting), who are by now running around in the sunshine, enjoying their summer holidays.