A free event for the borough’s primary schools, featuring Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho, award-winning author Serena Patel and co-creator of the mega-hit Supertato series, Paul Linnet is for pupils at state maintained primary schools, presented by Barnes Children’s Literature Festival.
Line up includes:
10am Supertato Silliness with Paul Linnet
Suitable for Reception, Years 1 & 2
Duration: 1 hour
Join Paul Linnet, co-creator of the mega bestselling Supertato series, in a hilarious celebration of everyone’s favourite supermarket superhero. Expect stories, songs, silliness and giggles galore…and a lot of veggies!
Paul Linnet, with co-creator Sue Hendra, are the creators of the smash hit Supertato books which have sold over one million copies and are now a popular CBeebies series. Together they have created over 100 titles including some of the UK’s favourite picture books such as Barry the Fish with Fingers, Mean Green Time Machine which won the British Book Award in 2023, Norman’s New Shell, winner of the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award in 2018, and I Need A Wee, which won the Laugh Out Loud Book Awards in 2016.
11.30am Serena Patel
Suitable for Years 2 – 5
Duration: 1 hour
Calling all pet fans. You’re invited to join Pia’s Pet Club with Serena Patel, author of the multi-award winning Anisha, Accidental Detective series.
Serena will introduce you to Pia, the star of her funny new animal adventure series. Pia loves pets, but no matter how much she begs her parents for one, the answer is always NO! But Pia doesn’t give up easily…
Join Serena for this fun fact-filled session where you can test your pet-based knowledge with a PAWesome quiz (do you know what percentage of the time cats spend sleeping?) and you’ll get the chance to create your own pet story character
Duration: 1 hour.
Serena Patel’s debut Anisha, Accidental Detective won the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award, The Week Junior Book Award and the Crimefest Best Crime Novel for Children, among others. It is currently being adapted for television by Nikesh Shukla for BBC Studio Kids & Family with Emmy-award winning actor Archie Panjabi.
1pm Joseph Coelho
Suitable for Years 3 – 6
Duration: 1 hour
Former Waterstones Children’s Laureate, Joseph Coelho is on a mission: to make poetry accessible to everyone! Join Joseph for a fun-packed poetry performance: have fun guessing poetic riddles, powering up your poetry skills and discovering just how easy it is to write your own poems!
Joseph Coelho OBE FRSL is an award winning author, performance poet and playwright who was the Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2022-2024. His debut children’s collection Werewolf Club Rules won the Children’s Poetry Prize in 2015 and he has since been nominated for every major children’s writing prize. In 2024, he won the Carnegie Medal in 2024 for his Young Adult novel The Boy Lost in the Maze.
The Barnes Children’s Literature Festival & the London Primary Schools Programme will provide over 21,000 places at author and illustrator events free for state maintained school pupils all over London in 2025.
The schools programme will launch its booking link to teachers on Mon 10 Feb. Please note; bookings for this event are through the Barnes website
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