A Very Abbey Hilly Christmas

Working with local author Gareth Baker and illustrator Vicky Kuhn, the children have all written their very own Christmas or winter poems and produced accompanying illustrations.

The work has then been turned into a festive book of poetry by Taralyn Books.

Poems range in themes from Christmas acrostics to rhyming tales of Santa getting stuck.

They have been proudly written by the children to celebrate their fantastic imagination and poetry skills.

This was the culmination of work on writing with local author, Gareth Baker, who worked with the children in a series of workshops to develop their poetic skills.

Pupils in Year 5 were then thrilled to be able to hold a ‘launch event’ for the book at Kirkby Library.

The school choir all sang a selection of songs and performed extracts from the book before providing the library with copies of the book to go into the library stock.

They were watched by proud family members as a fantastic way to get into the festive spirit!

For the school, this is a proud moment, publishing its first book and also watching pupils become published poets, authors and illustrators.

Adam Jevons-Newman, deputy headteacher, said: “Exciting, engaging and memorable opportunities such as these are exactly the sort of things we want our Abbey Hillians to achieve in their time with us.

Helen Chambers, headteacher, said: “We are very proud of our Abbey Hillians and congratulate them on this amazing achievement.”

The school already has plans lined up for the next publication, with Year 5 pupils set to write and publish their own Greek Mythology book in the summer term.