Visit from Jenny Sommervell

Today we were fortunate to have Jenny Sommervell in our school reading two of her picture books, The Day Dad Blew Up the Cowshed and The Eel Hunt. We  learned lots about how Jenny gets her ideas from real experiences and stories from childhood, and she also told us about her writing process. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to get a book to the publishing stage! Jenny told us that the most important thing is to get the story right first, then to think about choosing the right words to use. She also told us how important it is to have the characters encountering lots of problems because that is what makes the story interesting.  This is known as "torturing the characters"!