By During the year in which my first 2 books turned 6 years old, the publishing industry seems to be losing interest in them – and, by extension, me. But what, perhaps, the publishing industry doesn’t seem to consider is that with children’s books targeting a narrowly-defined age range, the audience refreshes quickly. Children not yet even born when the first books were published will already have outgrown my early-years text What Can You See? and be able to enjoy the more surreal, anarchic comedy of I Like To Put Food In My Welly and A Zoo In My Shoe.
With this in mind, I started 2025 by offering to visit local primary schools for World Book Day and received more requests than I could manage, starting the year with a rare morale boost for such aging books – and such an aging author. I took my books – and associated cuddly toys, activity sheets, stickers and bookmarks to Our Lady of Lourdes primary school in Finchley in north London, where I read What Can You See? to children from Reception and Year 1 and treated Year 2 and 3 children to a series of activities related to A Zoo In My Shoe.
The next reading event of the year came in May, when I was invited to entertain children at the Coppetts Wood Festival, to raise awareness of the conservation efforts for this much loved natural resource. My books joined poetry, morris dancing and clay-making as activities to keep children engaged, while their grown-ups were talking about trees. I even had a visit from the local MP, Sarah Sackman, who said she’d pop back later for a signed copy of one of my books.
Next came a busy June, with visits to two events I’ve attended in previous years – the local school summer fair and the rather larger East Finchley Festival. At the school fair, I introduced juggling to the show for the first time – luring children in from further afield, only to surprise them with the books, once they came to have a go.
The aspiration of any children’s author is to create a book with longevity – one that will continue to be enjoyed for generations. The books of Dr Seuss clearly have that enduring quality, along with the more recent works of Michael Rosen or Julia Donaldson, with books from the likes of Oliver Jeffers and Rob Biddulph also likely to be enjoyed by my own children, if not by the generation after them. Indeed, why would future generations be denied such pleasures?
I might, then, conclude that as long as such notions as swimming in a cup of tea, a dancing chimp stepping on your nose, covering your pizza with fleas or putting food in your welly remain funny, it would seem a shame that tomorrow’s or even today’s primary school children shouldn’t be able to enjoy the same laughter as those of just six years ago.
PS: Note teachers – I’m available for World Book Day 2026!
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