07 Oct 2024
Best-selling children’s writer and illustrator Cressida Cowell was the special guest at Fleetville Junior School today.
Cressida is most famous for her How to Train Your Dragon series, which was adapted by Dreamworks Animation as an award-winning film franchise, but her other work includes The Treetop Twins, The Tiny Detectives series, the Emily Brown books and The Wizards of Once range.
Her visit to Fleetville Junior involved a tour around the school hosted by four house captains, judging handmade dragons crafted by pupils, and leading an assembly in which she answered questions and sketched her creations Hiccup and Toothless.
“I’m just so excited to be here in this school because I can see and I can feel the creativity and imagination here,” she said, referring to the costumes pupils were wearing, and the different dragons they had made out of cake, Lego, clay and other materials.
She added: “I’m going to let you into a secret, when I was at school, my handwriting wasn’t very good, and my spelling wasn’t very good either. I used to get so downhearted because I thought that that’s what being a writer was all about, but being a writer is about your ideas.
“When I was little, I loved drawing and writing and reading, but I didn’t know any writers, which is why I really love going into schools and things and meeting children, because I didn’t think being a writer was something that you could be.
“You are an amazing school. You really are. I’m so impressed by all of your ideas.”
Just before leaving for another engagement at St Albans Cathedral Cressida officially opened the school’s newly refurbished library and took a look around.
Headteacher Clare Whitehouse said: “We were incredibly proud to have welcomed Cressida to Fleetville for a truly inspiring visit. It was an absolute honour to hear her speak so passionately about our pupils and school, as well as witness her experience firsthand the deep love of reading and creativity that runs through Fleetville.”
