Thursday October 16th 2025

Dear Diary,

I had an unbelievable time at Ulverley School today. The pupils couldn’t have been more excited to have an author visiting; the teachers couldn’t have been more helpful or more engaged during my workshops; and the parents couldn’t have been kinder at the end of the day… despite many of them having to queue for ages to purchase copies of my books! The pupils themselves were so full of beans when I launched into my assembly that I was a little concerned about reading the opening chapters of WARNING: May Contain Dragons — fearing my voice wouldn’t carry over the noise and I’d have to cut short the number of pages I’d planned to read. But I needn’t have worried, as the moment I started reading, everyone fell silent. Then as soon as I reached the end of chapter 2, the buzz of energy started up again in force, with lots of lovely comments about the story along with interesting thoughts about what might be about to happen next. After my assembly, it was on to workshops for every year group from Year 1 upwards. The pupils really impressed me with their creativity as the younger ones dreamt up book cover designs for future stories I should write in the Words of WARNING collection while the older ones wrote stories, poems, raps, letters, and diary entries of their own. With the help of the teachers, I awarded so many certificates throughout the day. And we got to hear many pupils reading or performing their fantastic written work aloud, which is something I always relish. At lunchtime, it was an honour to be interviewed by four of the school newspaper editors for an article they plan on writing. It was a lot of fun talking to them about my author journey, and they’d prepared some great questions for me… so I hope they got all the answers they needed in the short time we had together. I was really sad to leave Ulverley School at the end of the day. The pupils were an absolute joy to spend time with and will always have a special place in my heart. They couldn’t have been more enthusiastic, hardworking, polite, kind, and fun to be around. And I’m so looking forwards to returning next year with WARNING: Grandma’s Gone Bonkers!