Author Visit - Daniel Ingram Brown

On Friday 1st March, new children's author Dan Ingram Brown came to visit my school. I asked him to come and speak to 240 of the older children in the school about his book Rise of the Shadow Stealers in the hope that it would inspire some of them to read and write with more enthusiasm. The children were all very excited when I introduced him (as were the teachers). He began by telling them about some of the plays he had written. He used props from each play as a talking point, and allowed the children to pick them out of the hat for him. He them went on to answer some of the children's questions about writing and his inspirations before reading from his book.

The children were all very keen to get involved in the activities he had prepared for him and asked some really interesting questions. They found out that his inspiration for writing comes from all sorts of places; his fear of flying, his dreams and even from the characters in his book! His author inspiration is Philip Pullman and although he is currently writing his second book, he himself was a reluctant reader.

Everybody really enjoyed themselves and some of the children have already begun writing stories about him, his characters and some of the props that he let them see from his plays. A couple of the more reluctant readers even brought him a picture at the end of the day which they gave to him. Many of the children have read the books that he signed for them, as have I... This was a wonderful experience for them and I think that seeing him has proven to some of the older boys that writing isn't a girly thing to do, that they can be awesome authors too!

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