Ed Vere Tour Round-Up

Hannah Sycamore
By Hannah Sycamore Posted in Children's Book Tour
November 15th, 2017


In October 2017, the Scottish Friendly Children’s Book Tour took the award-winning author and illustrator Ed Vere to meet P1-3 pupils from 13 schools across West Dunbartonshire, East Dunbartonshire and North Ayrshire! It was an exciting week of storytelling and illustration.

Ed Vere’s books include the renowned Max series, featuring the fearless kitten Max, Banana and Bedtime for Monsters. Ed’s first book in the Max series, Max the Brave, was a New York Times Bestseller and was listed in the Sunday Times “100 Modern Children’s Classics”. In 2009, Ed’s book Mr Big was selected for the Booktrust’s first Booktime programme and 750,000 copies were send to schools across the UK. Ed’s books encourage readers to think about the themes of friendship, tolerance and sharing.

Unsurprisingly, schools were excited for Ed’s visit and ran all sorts of activities in the lead up to his visit. Pupils had prepared questions to ask Ed, drawn their own posters and had been reading his books. In one school older pupils read Ed’s books to the younger ones as part of a shared reading project, and Banana proved to be a particular favourite with the P7’s! Staff created displays inspired by Ed’s books, and one of our favourites was a classroom door decorated as the cover of Mr Big.


The session began with the pupils enjoying interactive storytelling with Ed. Pupils were especially vocal when Ed got confused between a mouse and an elephant in Max the Brave (an easy mistake to make) or couldn’t find Mr Big playing his piano. Pupils were then lead in a step-by-step character draw-along activity by Ed. Some fantastic drawings were produced and teachers regularly commented on the brilliant talent within their classes. There are most definitely some budding illustrators and authors in East and West Dunbartonshire and North Ayrshire!

A huge thank you to Ed and all the schools that took part in such a fantastic and creative week!

Super Stats!

  1. 1059 fantastic drawings created across the week
  2. 345 books sold
  3. 1 door decorated as Mr Big

Fabulous Feedback!

The event was super and the children really enjoyed it.

The event encourages young readers not only to read words but to read a situation.

We are very proud of our pictures – Craigdhu Primary School P1

The Monster story was very scary but we liked the funny mouse story – Craigdhu Primary School- P1/2







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