Category: events

With Year 6 SATs and GCSE exams looming, we will soon have spaces available in our very successful tuition centre.

Call or drop in for details.

 

Happy Pesach, Happy Good Friday, Happy Friday…we’re having a day off. Well, a day away from the shop itself, but not a full day off, so here’s a little blog post to whet your appetites about what we have coming up in the next couple of months.

We love to support writers. Of course we do, that’s our business. But specifically, we love to support new authors or authors who may not be as popular as they deserve to be. With that in mind, we have three events planned for new authors within the next month or so. The first is tonight! Dani K has published a book for grown ups, entitled ‘Footballers and Louboutins’.This book is a real Essex read – full of the glam and glitz that is expected in this part of the world – but do glittery dreams really come true? It’s not too late to come along tonight to meet Dani, have a glass of fizz and discover the perfect holiday read.

Next up is new author, Joanne Gale, with her book The Rare Monkey with the Colourful Bottom. Follow the rare monkey through his journey, as he discovers the importance of staying true to yourself. The story is perfect for sharing with young children or reading to yourself. Check out the website here for more information about this beautifully illustrated new book. Joanne will be in-store on Saturday 18th April, from 15:30.
This is another FREE author event at Chicken and Frog, so just drop in to meet Joanne and find out more about The Rare Monkey with the Colourful Bottom! Joanne will be spending time with our writing club too, so bring along your questions.

And last, but by no means least, is builder turned author, local man Steve Franks. Here’s a synopsis of ‘Red Dragon Stories: Book 1: The Princess and the Basket of Strawberries’:

The Princess is having a wonderful time picking strawberries, and when her friends join her they all look forward to a scrumptious strawberry tea. But the Wicked Witch of the North has other ideas and, with the help of her evil pet dragon, she snatches the friends away from the forest. Can Red Dragon and his nephew Little Blue find their friend the Princess before it is too late?

Steve will be visiting us on Saturday 9th May, from 15:00, so do pop in to meet him and hear from the man himself.

There’s plenty more on the horizon, so don’t forget to keep up to date with our events page, for holiday events and plenty more visits from great authors, including Alex English this summer!

We are so lucky to be booksellers. Do you want to know why? It’s because we get to share our passion for reading with children (and adults too). One of the ways that we do that is by persuading authors and illustrators to spend some of their time with us at Chicken and Frog. This weekend (today in fact) Teresa Heapy popped in for a few hours.

Teresa has written and edited many books for Oxford University Press, and has now written two beautifully illustrated picture books, with the equally talented Sue Heap. The inspired ‘Very Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Very Little Cinderella’ take the traditional tales that we know and love and turn them upside down. Red and Cinderella are feisty toddlers, with very firm ideas about how their lives should be. These books are fantastic for sharing, either snuggled up on the sofa, or to a whole class.

Teresa read, she sang, she used puppets, she bought with colouring in sheets…quite frankly she was awesome. Here are some photos to prove how brilliant she was:

Hello dear reader. We have had a really super afternoon, celebrating children’s writing. Our previous post let you know all about the annual writing competition that we run and who all of the well-deserved winners were.

Below are a small selection of photographs from the afternoon, with author and friend of Chicken and Frog, J.D.Irwin:

Look out for this week’s edition of the Brentwood Gazette and Made in Essex for the full story!

Our annual writing competition was a huge success, with over 700 entries this time around. It was an absolute joy to read all of the stories and poems that were sent in. Congratulations to all who entered, you did yourselves proud.

Thankfully we do not make the final decision; we passed on that huge responsibility to J.D.Irwin, author extraordinaire!

So, after a lot of reading, here are the winners and runners up. We had so many entries from Key Stage 2, that we ended up choosing 2 winners and a runner from that age category!

EYFS: Kamsi Nebo (winner) and Shaun Obi (runner up)

Key Stage 1: Thomas Staunton (winner) and Olivia Eriksson Hassan (runner up)

Key Stage 2: Timmy Akinsehinwa and Archie Harris (winners) and Aimee C (runner up)

Julie will be joining us on Saturday 21st February at 2p.m. to award certificates and prizes. All are welcome to join us.

Hooray for WBD! We will have all of the WBD £1 books in for you – just come in to exchange your voucher for a book or use your £1 voucher towards another book in-store.

The vouchers are given out in schools and nurseries – don’t miss out!

We will be reading stories throughout the day and giving away some little goodie bags – first come, first served.

Thursday 5th February marked the very first #HarryPotterBookNight. Bloomsbury came up with the idea and encouraged bookshops, libraries, schools etc.to take part in this magical night. We decided to shift our event to the Saturday, as we tutor mid-week and felt that a 7p.m. start wasn’t too practical for children (or tired parents) on a school night. And so, #HarryPotterBookNight took place for us just last night.

The idea behind this event was to celebrate the books, rather than the film franchise which so many immediately think of when the name ‘Harry Potter’ is uttered. We were very happy with this. Don’t get me wrong, film and television has it’s place without any shadow of a doubt, but books…well, they’re special too. As the event was free, we had no idea about numbers – we didn’t think to ask people to book in, pardon the pun. To be honest, I thought we’d get between 10-15 children at most. As it turned out, this was a little naive and we ended up with 35 children, plus parents, so it was rather busy in our teaching room last night.

Wizarding hats off to Bloomsbury, who put together a superb resource pack to use. The event began with a reading from ‘The Sorting Hat’ and it was wonderful to see a room of attentive listeners as I read Rowling’s infamous narrative aloud. We sorted our new students into their Houses, sang the Hogwarts song (in a variety of ‘tunes’, volumes and speed) and then split into Houses before the grand Hogwarts Quiz. It was close, however Gryffindor came out as the victors. Bravo to Gryffindor – I was Hufflepuff, but I think that I took the loss graciously.

Once the quiz was over, we drank Butter Beer (cream soda and butterscotch sauce), before icing sticky licky biscuits. Inbetween the sugar, each House designed their own magical creature and penned brand new spells fitting with the characteristics of their allocated House. All in all, it was a brillaint evening of fun, which we are very much looking forward to repeating next year. Here are some pictures of our Hogwarts students:

Do look out for us in the coming week’s edition of the Brentwood Gazette – I am sure that their photographs will be far better than ours!

What with the Gruffalo visiting, the Light Up and people starting to get organised for Christmas, we’ve had a very busy few weeks – I’m not complaining, it’s been great! And today we’ve been celebrating #SmallBusinessSaturday.

Ariel and Horrid Henry have been into Chicken and Frog, as well as going for a stroll around the town – especially the wonderful Ongar Road, where you can find so many brilliant shops and food outlets.

Henry was rather naughty, as you can see,

Luckily he wasn’t as cheeky when he went for a walk around the town. I’m not sure even Henry was outrageous enough to jump on other people’s furniture…at least, I don’t think he did.

The beautiful Ariel braved the cold, visiting the Ongar Road, the High Street, the Baytree Centre and Crown Street. Here she is in the warm, looking gorgeous,

If you would like to hire Ariel for a party, just follow this link.

A massive thanks to the Renaissance Group and Brentwood Council for their continued support of our endeavors!