This week I, accompanied by two nine year olds went to visit the Southbank centre where Imagine Book Festival was taking place. It was very well organised with children taking the leading roles, conducting tours, making announcements and showing people to their seats in ticketed events. There was plenty of activities taking place around the buildings including an ultra violet wall which children could take part in by drawing with highlights to an underwater theme. The girls loved being allowed to draw on the wall and seeing it show up in strange colours. We saw lots of children taking part in a Borrowers workshop complete with lab coats and glasses. There were stages set up around the place where children could sing or strut their dance stuff and there were also sing a long sessions being held throughout the day. The girls added wishes to the special wish tree and tried to guess how many lego bricks made up the giant book in the foyer.
The highlight for us was the ticketed event to see David Walliams talk about Ratburger. The session was scheduled for fifty minutes and was thoroughly entertaining. HE began with an interview that was amusing and kept the audience of 8-78 year olds entertained! He talked about how he had taken inspiration from Roald Dahl and how many of his characters were based on people he knew in real life. He then did a reading from the book which was fabulous. The girls were able to follow from their own copies but all eyes were on David as he voiced all the characters and brought them to life fabulously! It was intriguing to find out that he writes this way hearing the voices of the characters as he writes.
The last section was a Q&A where he took questions exclusively from the children in the audience. They asked him who particular characters were based on, why the endings of the books were sad, who his favourite character was, which was his favourite book he had written and which character he thought he was most like. Perhaps the best part was when he discussed why he wrote, to entertain. He referred to the fact that children seem to read less nowadays as there is so much more to distract them and therefore he wants every book he writes to be perfect so that if his is the book a person picked up they would pick up another because they had enjoyed it so much.
After the session he invited the children to come to the foyer for a book signing, cue an ungainly rush down the stairs of the auditorium and race through the foyer to the queueing area! It was rather a stampede but one that was rewarded as after a twenty minute wait the girls had signed books, a photograph to remember the occasion and had the opportunity to ask David a question which he answered. Despite the hordes of people he made everyone of them feel special and un-rushed and I think he has probably ensured that the girls will be reading his next book! We had a lovely day, it was a bit too cold to go on a duck tour, walk down the Thames or wait to go on the London Eye but I will be looking out to see who is at Imagine next year for sure!
