Author, illustrator or poet visits

Author visits are a great way to help students get engaged with reading and literacy. These visits inspire creativity, bring curriculum themes to life, and introduce students to diverse perspectives and backgrounds, often turning reluctant readers into eager ones. Meeting real-life authors demystifies the writing process, encouraging students to develop their own stories and pursue creative passions.

 World Book Day is always a popular time for authors to visit schools; however author visits can be done all throughout the year. One of the barriers for schools hosting authors in their schools it the cost. Similarly to maintaining a school library’s collection, it’s important to ensure that there is some money set aside for author visits and other library related events. Make sure you take advantage of any publicity tours or local author visits that may offering visits for a lower cost.

Formats that your visit can take

• A whole-school or key stage assembly
• Visits to individual classes or reading groups
• A visit that links to an area of study
  • A writer or illustrator from a part of the world being studied in class
  • A writer who specialises in a particular genre
  • A writer who writes historical fiction about the time period being studied
• Creative writing workshops
• Draw-along sessions with illustrators
• Performance workshops with performance poets

Here are some budget friendly options for author visits

• Take advantage of authors providing free talks. Many authors will go to schools to promote a newly released title. These are sometimes offered either free or free with purchases of the book/ hosting a book shop for pupils.
• Keep an eye on publisher websites. Publishers will often want to promote their new releases or newly acquired authors. This can sometimes result in author visits to school for free or at a lower rate.
• Barnes Children’s Literature Festival. The Barnes Children’s Literature Festival hosts number of free to attend, large scape author events across London. Places fill up fast so it’s important that you mark it in your calendar. Bookings are taken in February for June events.
• Contact your local library. Your local library will be hosting a number of events throughout the year. See if there is any collaboration your school could do with them. If there is an author event at the local library, see if you can bring a class along or if the author would want to come to the school another day.
• Utilise School Library Services events that provide author sessions at a heavily discounted rate. Make use of events that offer low-cost author visits. Tower Hamlets SLS offers a number of events such as the Creative Writing Competition, Poetry Slam and Book Award, which all offer author interaction with students for free or included in the event offering.

Good practice for visits to your school

• Have the writer or illustrator’s books available for children to read before the visit
• Discuss their work and have questions prepared
• If there’s time, put up a display of children’s work based on their books
• Make sure your visitor knows the format for the day in advance – e.g. age groups and numbers being worked with
• If they’re meeting different groups, allow for breaks in-between
• Arrange for any media-sharing permissions – often writers and artists like to share children’s creative work based on their books online.
• After the visit plan follow-on activities