Festival LIVE! events
Let the adventure begin!
Thu 4th March to Wed 11th March
Laugh with WOW writers, draw with the illustrator of Harry Potter Japanese edition, learn how to create a comic and write a mind-blowing poem in a single session. Daily, you will find unmissable events to enjoy!
How: browse the programme below and purchase your tickets. Events are priced free to £5. You can alternatively buy your Festival pass for £20.
A FESTIVAL PASS entitles a whole family to all events. When you buy your Pass, you will receive a PROMO CODE that will let you then select the events you want free of charge*. (*excludes Alligator's Mouth Comic Clubs)
On the day, join the event on Zoom from your home.
Buy your tickets or pass here: buytickets.at/thevineyardschoolpta/482187
Buy the festival books here: thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/vineyard-wbd via the Alligator's Mouth bookshop for click and collect in their shop
See you there,
Mrs Cross, Miss Clough, Miss Jobbins, Mrs Axbey, Zsofia Dedinszky, Chiara Parodi, Millie Dutto or, the Vineyard Book Festival team XO
NEW! Win how to Academy event tickets when you buy tickets or a pass. Raffle on Friday 12/3!
Friday 5th March
Author & Illustrator Event
Time: 1.15 pm (1 hour) / Price: £3
Host: Ms Fletcher Brown
Audience: Year 2 - 6 (6-11 years)
Paul Coomey is an exciting new talent and will share his first book, 'Stick Boy' with us. His Middle Grade book using graphic novel elements, is an accessible and entertaining read that brings laughter and joy to being unique.
Paul’s experience as an art director gives him insight into the work that goes into designing a book from start to finish, and he’s keen to inspire young creators to give it a go, no matter their skill level.
An unmissable event for fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Tom Gates and Timmy Failure.
Time: 4 pm (1 hour) / Price: £5
Host: Miss Clough
Audience: KS2 (7-11 years)
Dan Schlesinger's artworks are prized around the globe. He is well known in Japan as the illustrator of the Harry Potter series, which sold more than 22 million copies.
Drawing Hedwig, anyone?
Dan will show you gorgeous Harry Potter character illustrations, tell you the secrets of how he creates the covers, and will invite you to draw Hedwig him, stroke by stroke!
You can later stick your Hedwigs on your windows for your friends to see!
Bet not only the Dursleys will be wondering about the sudden apparition of such an original collection of owls around our school...
Bedtime stories by your teachers
Time: 6 pm, 6.30 pm, 7 pm, 7.30 pm / FREE (ticketed)*
Audience: ALL AGES - separate sessions
Put on your pyjamas and listen to one (or more!) of our marvellous teachers reading you a story!
*Note that this is a free event but you still need to "buy" your tickets so we can manage the Zoom links.
Schedule of readings:
6 pm Mrs Mingolla reads Lucy Ladybird by Sharon King-Chai to Year Reception
6 pm Mr Rosewell reads The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister to Year Reception & Year 1
6.30 pm Miss Clough reads My Pet Star by Corrinne Averiss to Year 1 & 2
6.30 pm Mrs Axbey reads The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by John Scieszka to Year 1 & 2
7 pm Miss Finn reads The Missing Bookshop by Katie Clapham to Year 3
7 pm Mrs Whymark reads The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle to Year 2, 3 & 4
7 pm Miss Wells reads Scribbleboy by Philip Ridley to Year 4
7.30 pm Miss Reilly reads Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor by Patricia Volda to Year 5
7.30 pm Miss Jobbins reads Snow and Rose by Emily Winfield Martin to Year 6
7.30 pm Mr Collier reads A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton to Year 5 & 6
Monday 8th March
Time: 5 pm (40 mins) / Price: £3
Host: Ms Foster
Audience: Y5-Y6 (9-12 years)
Have you ever dreamed of interviewing Cristiano Ronaldo or Messi? Have you fancied being a TV presenter? Do you want to travel the world and be paid for it? Well, this could be the talk for you...
Alison has started writing her autobiography and will be talking to you about writing YOUR future. Join her as she helps you focus on your passions and how you can turn them into reality.
Time: 4 pm (30 mins) / Price: £3
Host: Mrs Cross
Audience: Y3-Y4 (7-9 years)
Tom McLaughlin writes pictures and doodle words for Bloomsbury, Puffin, Oxford University Press, Simon & Schuster, Scholastic, The Guardian, Disney, Nickelodeon.
Join his action-packed session for storytelling, live drawing and to hear about his journey from cartoonist, to illustrator and writer. Tom will describe how he found the courage to write for the first time despite suffering from dyslexia and how it affects, and influences his work.
Get ready for lots of laughs and fun!
Time: 3.45 pm (30 mins) / Price: £3
Host: Miss Clough
Audience: YR-Y1 (4-6 years)
Poppy dreams it would be fun to have a tail. But which kind will she choose?
She tries out many different animal tails, then invents her own and finds lots of amusing and original ways to use it.
Showing its vibrant illustrations and light-hearted rhyme, Cate will read Poppy's Tail, captivating children's imagination and entertaining them.
More about the book HERE.
Harry Potter: The Philosopher's Stone Kahoot! quiz - by Y6's Matteo and Anoushka
SOLD OUT!
Time: 6 pm (estimated 40 mins) / £1
Host: Mrs Mingolla
Audience: ALL AGES
Prizes: KS1 and KS2 winners and NEW! best dressed
Required: 2 devices - one of them with the Kahoot! app for answering the questions, the other to connect to the event via zoom
LUMOS! You live like you are in Hogwarts. It's that first Harry Potter page that changed your life forever.
Dress up as your fav character and by the hands of Mrs Mingolla, Matteo and Anoushka enjoy a surely memorable quiz.
Tuesday 9th March
Time: 3.30 pm, 4 pm, 4.30 pm, 5.15 pm / Price: £3
Host: Mrs Cross
Audience: Separate sessions
3.30 - Reception
4 pm - Year 1-2
4.30 pm - Year 3-4
5.15 pm - Year 5-6
Storytelling is one of the most ancient artforms, and continues to this day as a vibrant part of culture throughout the world. We are pleased to welcome Hannah Need, a professional storyteller also known as ‘The Storyteller of Southfields’ to entertain the children with four interactive storytelling sessions celebrating World Book Day.
Hannah describes her job as the best job in the world. She tells stories to children, adults, or anyone who will listen! The stories she tells are often traditional tales, but she can’t resist adding a twist or two...
Hannah will weave her storytelling magic and enthral the children with tales which centre around stories from around the world, with a nod to International Women’s Day (March 8th 2021).
Children will discover that storytelling is a very different experience to being read to, with the stories being more immediate and compelling as the plot thickens...
Wednesday 10th March
Time: 2 pm (1 hour) / Price: £5
Hosts: Miss Jobbins and Mr Collier
Audience: KS2 (8-12 years)
M.G.Leonard is a bestselling writer of children's books. Her books have been translated into over forty languages. She burst onto the literary scene with her quirky debut Beetle Boy in 2016. She is currently writing the popular Adventures on Trains series.
In this exclusive event for our school, Maya will share how she creates her stories, will treat you with a memorable book reading of Beetle boy, and will answer your innermost curious questions.
There isn’t anything as wild, crazy or majestic as the beetle, MG says. Befriending a beetle, anyone?
Not to be missed.
More from MG Leonard
Hello, my name is Maya
I live in a wonderful place called Brighton, in England, situated between the sea and the South Downs. It's beautiful and so are the people.
I love listening to music. Every moment of my life has a song, every day a soundtrack. If I'm writing, I'm usually listening to Philip Glass or Max Richter.
My real name is Maya Gabrielle but my pen name is M. G. Leonard. I created a pen name because my eldest son and I don’t share a surname, and I made him a promise that if my books got published I’d take his middle name as my pen surname. I think it is important to keep promises. When you talk to me, call me Maya. When talking about my writing, please call me M. G. Leonard. Thanks.
My stories are for young people, or people who are young at heart, who embrace nature and its wild and crazy majesty. But right now, for me, it’s beetles that are blowing my mind. There isn’t anything as wild, crazy or majestic as the beetle.
And yes it's true that I used to be scared of insects, but now, I love them and have lots of pet beetles.
Time: 3 pm (40 mins) / Price: £3
Host: Ms Foster
Audience: Y2-Y6 (6-12 years)
Isabelle, a multi-talented cricket commentator, BBC broadcaster, and sports writer is also the author of the Taj Tigers.
She will share how her career in the sports world, meeting unbeatable sportwomen and men, inspired her to write the Taj Tigers, the story of a slumdog child who achieves the unthinkable in the sports world.
Take your seats, enjoy her book reading and dare to ask her your most burning questions about it all.
Harry Potter: all 7 books Kahoot! quiz - by Y6's Matteo and Anoushka
Time: 5.30 pm (40 mins) / Price: £1
Host: Mr Collier
Audience: KS2 (8-12 years)
Required: 2 devices - one of them with the Kahoot! app for answering the questions, the other to connect to the event via zoom
HA! You thought you knew it all - even Minerva McGonagall's previous career or what Fred and George once turned Ron's teddy into?
Our school has serious Harry Potter fans like you. Rub your shoulders with them in a fun competition for accuracy of facts. Epic.
WIN WIN WIN The overall winner gets a free audiobook or ebook from the Pottermore Shop - and the glory of being the winner of the school's first ever Harry Potter masters quiz!
Comic Club at Alligator's Mouth
Time Travel Comics!
Time: 4 pm (1 hour) / Price: £10 (£1 of every sale will go to Book Aid International) - This is an external event
Host: Mark @ Alligator's Mouth
Audience: Year 5-6
Join this World Book Day special Comics Club event for pupils of the Vineyard!
More about the event
Mark from the Alligator's Mouth children's bookshop leads the class, posting printable materials like comic templates in advance and hosting a one-hour tutorial on the day. Comics Clubbers are welcome to talk about their stories and there's a stream where they can share photos of their comics. The theme for this Comics Club is Time Travel! Drawing guides and tutorials will include Egyptian mummies, Tudor monarchs, time machines and more. All you will need are a device, paper, pens, pencils and your imagination.
The ticket price includes:
A link to the Google Classroom
Your child's name added to the enrollment list
A 15% discount voucher code, applicable to all the books within The Alligator's Mouth website shop page, valid for repeat uses from the day of the event until one week later
Notes:
It's fine to have more than one child on the ticket if they are sharing the same device
You will need a Google account (free to set up) to access Google Classrooms
Thursday 11th March
Time: 3.45 pm (KS1) / 4.45 pm (LKS2) / Price: £3
Host: TBC
Audience: Y2-Y6 (6-12 years)
Do you think poetry isn’t for you? It isn’t exciting and doesn’t inspire your creativity? Well think again...
Simon’s positive, passionate and inspirational approach will guide your child to write a poem during the workshop showing them that poetry is accessible to all. Crucially, he makes poetry fun! Join him as he shares his writing secrets with you...
About Simon Mole
Simon Mole is an acclaimed children’s poet who has shared stages with Michael Rosen, Kae Tempest and John Hegley. His first picture book Kites was published in 2019, and his new book 'I Love My Bike' is released later this year.
Simon is a National Poetry Day Ambassador, with over ten years’ experience using rap and poetry in community and education settings, including projects with Great Ormond Street Hospital and Arsenal Football Club.
The tutorial videos at his YouTube channel are used by hundreds of thousands of children and teachers across the world each year, and have been featured on BBC Bitesize.
Watch on your own time!
David Litchfield reads and
ALIEN draw-along!
ALIEN draw-along!
Joseph Coelho reads his new book, THANK YOU
Past events:
Thursday 4th March
Charlotte Williams: Pablo the Rescue Cat
Time: 3.45 pm (30 mins) / Price: £3
Host: Miss Clough
Audience: KS1 (4-8 years)
A little girl searches for that special something to make her home complete. When she visits the animal shelter she finds the answer. Join Charlotte's engaging reading of this mysterious story to finally know, can Pablo the rescue cat rescue her?
What you always wanted to know: Book Publishing
Time: 5 pm (40 mins) / Price: £3
Host: Mrs Mingolla
Audience: KS2 (7-11 years)
From writing through editing to the book stores - how are books made? Margherita Trotta (star editor for Mondadori), Zsofia Dedinszky (publishing wiz for Frances Lincoln) and Ellen Alpsten (heroine author of Tsarina), Vineyard parents, will tell you everything you ever wanted to know. Featuring Maya (Y7), an intrepid self-published Vineyard alumna author of The Run (from Fri 5/3 also in the school library website)!
Comic Club at Alligator's Mouth
Time Travel Comics!
Time: 4 pm (1 hour) / Price: £10 (£1 of every sale will go to Book Aid International) - This is an external event
Host: Mark @ Alligator's Mouth
Audience: Year 3-4
Join this World Book Day special Comics Club event for pupils of the Vineyard!