Scabbajack

I apologise if this sounds boring, but yet again the schools we have visited have been nothing short of fantastic.

St Benedict’s RC MS at Ashington provided a somewhat smaller audience than usual…about 260 pupils. However, at our book-signing the next day we signed just over 200 books and the most popular book by far was the latest scary novel, Scabbajack!  Hope all you guys at St Benedict’s don’t have nightmares!

The next day it was back to the school we had a fabulous time at just over a year ago – Valley Gardens. The main man who looks after us there is the handsome and suave Mr Jonathan Royds. He’s from my home town of Rotherham, so I’ve got to say that! For those who don’t know, Valley Gardens is the biggest Middle School in the land…about 800 pupils.  I saw about half of them last year, but this year I saw them all. I have to say that the pupils there are wonderful to entertain. They are really up for the scary stuff and have no problems with joining in whatsoever.  They even applauded when I went into my embarrassing ageing pop-star routine and sang my favourite Kelly Clarkson song into my hairbrush…though I think they were really just being polite!  While I was at Valley Gardens, I met up with my old friend Adam.  I will never forget Adam…he has no belly button, just like Hudson Brown in the Mokee Joe story. Last year, when I first met him, I didn’t believe him…until he showed me along with the audience of 400 other people while he was up on stage with me. As my wife said later, it was the first time she had ever seen me speechless!

Tomorrow, we’re off to the other side of the  A1, to Pontiland. I’ll be re-visiting the Richard Coates MS and a first visit to Pontiland MS. I can’t wait.

As usual, a big thank-you to all the staff and pupils in the NE for making our visit so ‘special’. We love it up here. Real people…real hospitality… and a real thirst for the supernatural!  Please look under your beds tonight…the Scabbajack boy might just be hiding there!

Jenny's new reading challenge!

Wow! What a week!

Monday…Ovingham Middle School…brilliant! Tuesday…Monkseaton Middle School…brilliant again!  Wednesday…all the way up to Alnwick (pronounced ‘Anick’) to Alnwick the Dukes Middle School…again…brilliant!

All of the NE pupils have been a delight to meet and they and the staff welcomed us with real North-Eastern hospitality. Our audiences revelled in the nightmare world of Mokee Joe and even more so when absorbed into the horrific story of the new book ‘Scabbajack’. In fact, the NE schools have been the f irst pupils to get their hands on the ’hot off the press’ Scabbajack and stocks have already gone down dramatically. One boy at Alnwick refused to buy the book as he’d had terrible nightmares after only hearing about it in my presentation! Another pupil said that Scabbajack’s eyes really freaked her out and seemed to cut into her with a zombie-like stare.

Today I entertained around 100 year 8′s back at Monkseaton MS. They took a while to ‘warm up’ and then were brilliant! I can’t wait to see all the Monkseaton pupils again tomorrow (Fri) when we return to sign books for them. I have a really strong feeling that my wrist will be suffering from repetitive strain injury by the end of the session. The girl in the picture is called Jenny and she claims that no book has ever held her interest to finish it. I have challenged her to start reading my book with the promise that she will definitely read it through to the end…we will see!!

A big thank-you to Neil Jones, Keith Sanderson and Dawn Morton for inviting us to their ‘cracking’ schools. They have already booked us in for a ‘Bonebreaker’ return next year…so all you NE pupils had better watch out!!

You ain’t seen the last of Peter J Murray!!!