Dear Teaching Staff and Librarians,
I am writing to thank you for all your support for my ‘Eerie-on-Sea’ books. From the moment Malamander was published – back in the dim, distant pre-COVID days of 2019 – the book has been embraced as a class read, and I have been touched and delighted by the responses from children, and all the creative work that has been done and shared with me on social media. Writing, especially writing for young readers, is a transaction, and I’ve always been happy to interact with schools, answer questions, and be approached for feedback, but I could never have anticipated the warmth of the response to my writing in classrooms.
When I was at school, I was the quiet kid who didn’t volunteer – the boy with the stammer, who dreaded being called on to read aloud. A love of reading came to me slowly, but was fierce once it arrived. It was fed by my teachers, by my bookaholic mum, and by my librarian grandmother. But it may never have sparked at all without that one teacher who noticed my struggles and put in the extra effort needed to make sure I wasn’t left behind. Thank you, Mr Johns! This is what teachers and school librarians do – brilliantly but often quietly transforming young lives for the better.
I write my books with quiet kids who don’t volunteer in mind. Thank you for bringing those books to life for them, and their classmates, in countless creative ways. And if I sometimes seem to be making your class reads unnecessarily tricky by having Herbie say “!?” or Violet exclaim “…”, I can only apologise. But I just know you will rise to the occasion and make exactly the funny noise required. Thank you!
Thomas Taylor
Hastings, 2021
