For World Book Day 2024, I had the pleasure of visiting Abingdon Primary School in Stockport

This was a special visit as I have a younger cousin who attends Abingdon Primary School. I refrained from shouting them out during my visit. She could well have been happy to see me or cringing at the fact her older cousin was in her school – especially with the book reading to come.

On getting dropped off at the school, I saw these amazing pencil bollards. I’d never seen anything like these before and thought they were really fun. I’m not one for bollards as they’re overused and cause issues for people like me in getting around the streets. But they do have their places (like outside schools) and if I was ever to endorse a bollard it’d be upside down pencil ones

I entered the school and was shown through to the hall. The children soon piled in wearing their World Book Day outfits. We had Mary Poppins, a few of Harry Potters, Gruffalo’s and many other characters I’m probably now too old to know about.

I introduced myself before reading Nicky and Candy’s Street. The children and teachers all joined in, and we moved and chanted our way to Better Places.

After the reading, we did a short Q&A with some good questions. One asked was ‘how do you go blind?’ which sparked children wanting to share their thoughts and ideas on how people go blind. What they shared was spot on and it’s something that comes up quite often in school visits. The directness of children’s thoughts and answers do make me laugh so I’ve written a sperate blog on this question and children’s answers here.

Then came the most important part of the school visit; Abingdon’s World Book Day decorated potato competition. This brought back some memories of my own decorations in school although ours were eggs rather than potato’s – which makes much more sense as they’re less prone to cracking.

I was honoured to be asked to be a judge alongside Mrs Flanders to decide the best decorated potato.

It was a stellar line up, with amazing entrants but we had to make the tough decisions and pick a winner from each key stage. It was Elma the Elephant, The Gruffalo, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (my favourites) and a Percy Jackson Half-blood Camp design that came through on top on the day.

After a few book signings, I waved a good bye to the children and left them to get on with their activity filled World Book Day.

Abingdon, thanks for having me and making Better Places.

Witten by Ben Andrews on