The First Reading

The first time you read a new work out to an audience is always nerve-wracking. Reading work out is nearest a writer gets to immediate feedback. Faces are less able to come up with something polite to express. It's even more of a worry when you are reading to children as there is no artifice and no attempts to spare your feelings - just raw reaction. So it was with some trepidation that I read out the first chapter of The Trouble with Sauce to Years 5 and 6 of St Charles Primary school in Ryde yesterday.

It was a wet day, which, as any teacher will tell you, spells trouble in school. Prior to the reading the kids had been noisy. It wasn't that they were bored, but whenever I asked a question they answered it to each other rather than to me. To make it worse the teacher librarian kept jumping in to take control and make suggestions. I was seized with panic. Lab Rats is much more obvious in its appeal for reading, there's farting and wild adventure. Suddenly Trouble felt like it was a serious work with no fun. What had I done? Where were the laughs? I began to read and they began to listen. Past the first page and they were still listening. There's always a couple of fidgeters but by and large, the library full of about 100 kids were listening. There were titters and then gasps as the teacher walks into the trap in the classroon and ends up covered in food scraps. It worked. By lunchtime after I'd talked to Years 2,3 and 4, word came down to the library that there were 'loads' of students wanting to buy The Trouble with Sauce. Hurrah! Nobody had brought their money in so I am going back with the stock tomorrow for a sales and signing session. The pic is me with Year 2 who were very well behaved.