June 2013 – Chicken and Frog Bookshop

IBW Rocks (So far)

Posted on June 29, 2013 by chickenandfrog

This morning we awoke to the first day of Independent Booksellers Week (IBW). This is our first ever experience of IBW as booksellers, so the planning stage has been rather daunting. We really wanted to make sure that our passion for books oozed through the week.

Luckily for us we managed to snaffle ourselves an author to start the week off with a bang. The very funny and charming Christopher William Hill agreed to spend the whole day with us. Clearly he had not met us…the poor man.

Here we all are in a terribly cheesy, clearly staged photograph, sporting rather fetching IBW t-shirts,

Throughout the day Christopher spent time with our customers, entertained and was entertained by Max, drank copious amounts of tea (that was our main bargaining power when we asked him to come in) and then spent an hour and a half with the Creative Writing Club,

We really have had a fabulous day and I would like to thank Christopher for coming to sunny Brentwood. And a big thank you to our customers, both regular and new, for sharing part of their Saturday with us.

If you want to know what we’ve got planned for the rest of IBW, check out our events page or scroll down to the previous blog post.

p.s. We will be working with Christopher in the next academic year, to organise school visits. If you want to get involved, let us know!

p.p.s Christopher’s book, Osbert the Avenger, made it onto the Times’ summer reading list. It is that awesome.

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Independent Booksellers Week

Posted on June 26, 2013 by chickenandfrog

Hello all, how is everyone today? Good I hope! Here at Chicken and Frog we have been very busy putting together an exciting holiday programme of events to keep the children busy and the parents sane. For details of all that is going on, check out the events page.

We are really looking forward to the summer hols, but before we get there, next week is Independent Booksellers Week . What does this mean? Well, ideally it’s the time when you embrace your local independent bookshop and show them how much you love them. To this end, the following events are taking place:

On Saturday 29th June, the very lovely Christopher William Hill will be spending the whole day with us. Clearly we have never met or he would never have agreed to such madness. Christopher will be reading extracts from his book, talking about his life as a writer, selling some books (whilst masquerading as a bookseller) and even spending some time with our Creative Writing Club.

On Wednesday 3rd July (13:30-14:30) we are holding a FREE Hugless Douglas event for pre-schoolers. This is a drop in session, where you can make a Hugless Douglas mobile and listen to stories.

Thursday 4th July is Independents Day (clever play on words, we know). To celebrate this and the fact that Judith Kerr has just celebrated her 90th birthday, we will be having a Tiger Who Came to Tea Party, from 11:3-12:30. For just £1 (parents are free), you can eat cake and listen to lots of stories, including The Tiger Who Came to Tea (of course) and various Mog stories.

And finally, to round off Independent Booksellers Week, there will be a Where’s Wally Hunt in Brentwood on Saturday 6th July. Where’s Wally? You need to find him! He’s hiding in the following locations:
Chicken and Frog, Mi Neni, Rossi’s, B.M.Cycles, Ya Ya’s, Brentwood Theatre, Brentwood Library, Vintage Verde (KIngs Road), The Hair Company and French Quarter.

All you have to do is collect a ‘postcard’ from each location and bring them back to us. Easy! The first 100 hunters receive a prize. If you find 8 you will be entered into a bigger prize draw. This is a FREE event, so get involved.

Psst. There will be a bonus Wally at the Holly Trees Summer Fair – chocolate is on offer 😉

So there you go. Lots to do over the next week or so. Enjoy!

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Creating creativity

Posted on June 15, 2013 by chickenandfrog

What is creative writing and how do you encourage/coax your child into getting involved? All too often at school the creativity kind of gets sucked out of you. Not at my school obviously, because we have a brilliant creative curriculum which very much has our children in mind. But, what if that isn’t the case, then what? There’s nothing worse than being confronted with an A4 blank sheet of paper, when you have no ideas and/or enthusiasm.

So I thought I’d share a couple of the things that I do, in the classroom and also at Chicken and Frog during Creative Writing Club.

One very simple tool is story cubes. They are superb in my opinion. If you’re going on a long journey, there is an app version too, which saves you scrabbling around on the floor in search of lost dice.

There are different ways of using the cubes. The children can take it in turns to create a part of the story, using the dice for inspiration. Or roll all of the dice in a set and link the images together to form a story. The challenge level can be raised or lowered according to the ability of the child. I firmly believe that if you can’t say it, you can’t write it, so story cubes are the perfect way in for oral rehearsal of ideas.

My second secret weapon is Lego. I can not stress how heavily Lego features in my life. It is ace! Boys respond particularly well to Lego, but it works equally well with girls. One great activity is to give the children some to build…whatever they want. As they build, talk and then talk some more. Ask questions and if the answers are lacking in detail, ask some more. This is a sneaky approach to writing, as it is rather a covert operation. Once the building phase is complete, encourage the children to ask each other questions about what they have made. Then comes the writing. It can take on a range of genres: an interview, instructions, a story about the structure or creature…the possibilities are endless.

The final way in to writing that I want to share with you today is film. Children love film and T.V., so why not use it to your advantage? I find it particularly effective to take a look at clips that are not so familiar, otherwise children tend to just copy what they already know. Anime films are brilliant for character development and are a little different, so work well. You can watch a clip for inspiration, carry on the story or write the back story, create a film script…up to you! We have looked at various versions of the same story to kick off a good discussion, leading into writing reviews or a blog.

So there you go, just a few ideas to get your children writing. I know that these ideas aren’t groundbreaking, I’m not that clever, but hopefully they’ll help you to help your child. Go for it, writing can open up a whole world of possibilities.

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Martin Brown has left the building

Posted on June 7, 2013June 7, 2013 by chickenandfrog

Months ago I entered a competition with Scholastic to win a goody bag of free Horrible Histories stuff. I really love free stuff, so was more than happy to write a short email with a gruesome fact about Brentwood.

And then, a little while later, we were called on the phone. She said that we’d won ourselves a Martin Brown! I said ‘Are you sure? We’re very small you know,’ but she was certain. How amazing. The brilliantly talented Martin was booked in to visit us. Look, here he is, in our shop!

And so today, at around half past two, Martin arrived, accompanied by the equally lovely Elizabeth. Needless to say, there was much excitement abounding. Phoenix FM and the Gazette have been ever so generous and enthusiastic with their support, as have local schools. All of which meant that Martin was pretty much trapped with us for three hours, with a constant queue heading out of the door.

Here’s some pics to show it wasn’t all a dream:

Not only did Martin sign books, posters and Rattus stickers, he also spent time talking to all of our visitors. The rather bizarre creation pictured above was drawn by Martin, who asked the children for suggestions to create a character. So now we have a weird and wonderful original Martin Brown drawing. Yay!

As if all of that wasn’t generous enough, Martin then drew out the winning raffle ticket for our free prize draw for this,

The lucky winner will be contacted in the morning…and now I’m off for a snooze.