Doncaster: Discover the Spirit

Alan Gibbons

On Friday, 9th November, Blue Peter Award winning author Alan Gibbons visited Doncaster. The Armthorpe School hosted students from Hayfield and Don Valley for what turned out to be a very entertaining afternoon.

Alan's talk was both funny and informative, giving lots of information, but still including lots of personal stories reflecting his excellent sense of humour. He spoke about his childhood, his schooldays and the sort of books he'd enjoyed reading when he was younger. He then explained how he'd gone to college, become a bit of a hippy, and then done lots of travelling. Eventually, he got into teaching, and then writing. He felt that his career had really taken off when Shadow of the Minotaur won the Blue Peter Award, beating no less an author than J. K. Rowling herself! Alan spoke about his love of language, and the very different genres he has explored during his writing career. He introduced his latest book, Scared to Death, which has echoes of Jack the Ripper and sounds absolutely fantastic.

The second part of the afternoon was a question and answer session. The students present soon got over their initial shyness and asked lots of excellent questions. Again, we had to stop this as we'd gone way over time, and Alan just had time to sign some autographs and pose for photos before the Don Valley students reluctantly had to leave.

All of the students really enjoyed the experience. Here are some of the comments from the Don Valley students on the day:

Ryan, Y7: "Visiting Alan Gibbons was very interesting and very funny. I think he is a very nice guy and extremely funny"

Vicki, Y8: "Alan Gibbons was a very good author who is extremely inspiring and really funny"

Jay, Y9: "I thought Alan Gibbons was very interesting and very funny. He is a very confident speaker as well"

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