Emily Gravett Tour Roundup
In March, the Scottish Friendly Children’s Book Tour took award-winning illustrator and author Emily Gravett to Dumfries & Galloway and South Ayrshire for a special week of school events!
Before becoming an illustrator Emily Gravett spent almost a decade travelling round the UK in a big yellow bus and spent one cold winter in a makeshift campsite just outside of Dumfries. She is now a critically acclaimed author and illustrator, winning two Kate Greenaway awards.
As well as rediscovering her former traveller home, we visited small rural schools all over Dumfries & Galloway, travelling through the forests and coastlines, passing through Wigtown, Scotland’s book town, ending the week in South Ayrshire, working our way up the coast to Ayr.
Emily’s events were fun, loud and creative, with Emily first introducing to us how it was one discovery made her want to be an author – that books were the only thing that would stop her daughter crying! There were interactive readings of Tidy and Monkey & Me before pupils came up with their own twist on the story, which generally descended into Emily drawing aliens licking lots of disgusting things, in this sensory rhyming activity! For smaller groups there was a draw-along of Pete the badger from Tidy and crafting flowers for his newly planted forest!
Pupils consistently wowed us their brilliant drawing skills and active imaginations! One school came up with their own Scots Language reworking of Emily’s brilliant Dogs, or Dugs while another even planted trees in their school playground, inspired by Tidy!
A huge thank you to Emily and all the schools that took part in what was a fantastic week!
Congratulations to V Caruana, who won a signed copy of Tidy in our Emily Gravett competition!
Super Stats!
- Nearly half of the pupils we saw bought a book!
- 129 decibels: the predicted volume at which 70 P1-3 pupils can scream ‘Elephants!’
- 5 amazing retellings of ‘Monkey & Me’ and 146 hand crafted flowers for Pete the Badger’s garden