On tour with Christopher William Hill
Christopher William Hill doesn’t travel light. Setting off on the Scottish Friendly Children’s Book Tour his suitcase was packed full of travel essentials; a preserved human heart, the bottled smell of freshly spewed child vomit, a Christmas bauble filled with poisoned pills, a gas mask and a pair of plastic safety goggles.
Armed with these unusual props the author of the fantastically macabre Tales from Schwartzgarten series was well prepared to visit primary school pupils in Moray, Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen for a jam-packed week of events. Over the course of the week Christopher shared his passion for gruesome and gothic tales with over 1600 pupils from 12 different schools.
A brilliant performer and storyteller, Christopher’s sessions were full of sinister stories, ghastly surprises and quite a lot of food, both delicious and disgusting! Pupils joined in to make up stories and let their imaginations run wild, resulting in some very bizarre tales! After each event the pupils were left full of ideas and buzzing to get started on their own gory and spine-chilling stories.
Set in the gothic city of Schwartzgaretn, Christopher’s books are populated with vicious villains and despicable deeds, a combination which the children of Moray, Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen evidently adored. As one teacher said, ‘The visit last week was great – my class haven’t stopped talking about the books and some of my less enthusiastic readers have borrowed them and are reading them at home. Just what we want, really!’
A huge thank you to Christopher for a fantastic week and to all of the schools we visited in Moray, Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen.
Congratulations to Jane Willis who won a signed copy of the first book in the series, Osbert the Avenger in our Christopher William Hill competition!