Start the Story
Want to experience author visits from our side of things? Just
for fun, here's an excerpt from:
8
Issue 1 , June 201 2
C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 7
St Judas Welcomes Author Philip Arder
By Philip Ardagh
Welcome to St Judas.
Because of a mix-up in timetabling
Miss Horace who was supposed to be looking after you today
has had to go on a factory field-trip
with gifted and talented and the two classes
of students who’ve actually read your book.
We’ve had to put you with a younger group
who, like me I must confess, have never heard of you,
but we did look you up on Wikipedia
and see that you like cats.
Perhaps you could tell a story with lots of actions
and they could pretend to be their favourite animals?
There’s a note here from Miss H saying that
we are unable to buy any of your books for the library
because we’ve spent the budget for this school term.
The children won’t be able
to purchase any of your books either,
following a change of rules recently agreed by the PTA.
We have arranged, however, for you to sign
lots of scraps of paper
of ever-diminishing
sizes.
And for you to give two extra talks,
seeing as how you’re here.
A photographer from the local paper
has a small window in his busy schedule
so can only come halfway through your first event.
At this stage, we will have to stop proceedings
and remove from shot those children whose parents
have not given consent for them to be photographed.
It shouldn’t take long.
And I should warn you that
there are certain children
unsuitable for a Ց