A Devon author and award-winning artist visited the children at Offwell School.

Laura Wall is an illustrator and author based in Teignmouth where she runs an art gallery and works on her published children’s book series, Goose.

Laura worked with all the children in Offwell Primary from Reception to Year 6 (ages 4 to 11) where she lead creative writing workshops for the older children and art workshops with the younger classes.

In the creative writing for the older children, Laura read one of her Goose books and talked about the structure needed to create an interesting, entertaining and readable book.

The children used a story mountain to plot the setting, characters, beginning, middle and end of their own story, which they then set about writing with Laura helping with illustration ideas and keeping the story moving.

Teacher Miss Kirkland, who arranged the visit, said, “It was exciting to see how inspired the children became when listening to a real author and gaining insight into the process. They were all so motivated and some of the books produced were wonderful.”

The younger children focussed mainly on creating an inspirational front cover for a book and this proved equally motivational with all the children really keen to show what they could do. Some of the covers showed real artistic talent and promise for the future.

Headteacher, Mrs Legg visited all the sessions and thanked Laura for taking the time to make the sessions so engrossing.

She said, “It has been such a long time since we have been able to host visitors like Laura with all the Covid restrictions in place. It was fantastic to see the children’s faces lit up with excitement and inspiration.”