Yesterday was a full day at the Winchester Discovery Centre helping 20 children with their cartooning. Exhausting stuff, but great fun. I’d initially planned to approach it how I do the school talks, but a few of the older children were already showing promise and I didn’t want to lose their interest. Instead we looked at a few cartooning basics, designed some characters and were all creating cartoon strips and comic pages by lunchtime. We spent the last hour creating superheroes and villains, which the children reveled in, which isn’t bad when you consider how many hours they’d been doodling for. I’ve just been sent the feedback by Nick at WDC and it all appears to have gone down very well!

Oak Lodge is a special needs school quite close to where I live. I visited two classes of children last year which seemed to go down well, so this year the decision was taken to get a little more ambitious. We had a great time drawing Beaulieu the Hedgehog from my New Forest Friends books and then the children had been given the opportunity to buy signed copies of my books, which was a pleasing success. Thanks to all the staff and pupils, particularly Andrew Smart, for making me feel so welcome.

I last visited Sholing Infants a few years ago, and the school’s undergone quite a transformation since then. Staff and pupils were wonderfully friendly and the children produced some excellent artwork. Thanks for having me.

Spent a great day with Year 2 of Ringwood Infants yesterday. Very enthusiastic and curious children, with one particular class sending me off on all sorts of tangents with their thoughtful questions and observations. I’m already looking forward to going back next year.