Thursday was World Book Day, apparently, and by extension the whole week was World Book Week. Which, for me and my Comic Art Masterclasses, meant a busy week with a great deal of travelling, but a remarkably well-planned schedule by my standards. Starting off in Saturday in Boreland near Lockerbie for a Socks gig, I then made my way to Berwick On Tweed and started the week at Tweedmouth Middle School where, paid for by Hexham Book Festival, two groups of year 5s, 6s, 7s and 8s (a combination you'll only get at a Middle School) produced the comics you see above. And thence to Ripon...
... where the year 8s of Ripon Grammar School produced these two smashing comics. It was my second trip to RGS, and the second time I've been put up by librarian Sally and her husband Neil, for which many thanks. Indeed I did quite well hotel-wise this week, with Saturday's guest house in Boreland being paid for by the gig I was playing, and being a house guest on both Monday and Tuesday, when I stayed over with my Mum in Kibworth before setting off for Peterborough...
... where the year 5s of Newark Hill Primary produced Dognuts For Fun (somebody couldn't spell doughnuts) and My Undermants Are In The Air (someone inexplicably mis-spelled underpants, to universal amusement). After which I was back up north to Harrogate...
... where the year 7s of St Aidans School came up with my two favourite titles of the week - Somebody Parked Their Car On My Potato, and 11 Ninja Screwdrivers Go Scuba Diving 4 Unicorns. Genius. St Aidans were among the 11 teams from schools across North Yorkshire who took part in an inter-school Battle Of The Books quiz at Ripon Grammar which I had the pleasure of compering on Tuesday night. Turns out I make quite an adequate quiz master, if anyone's short of one.
The final school of the week was Pinecroft Primary in Warminster, which meant I got to go home at last between schools. Their year 4s, 5s and 6s came up with these spiffy titles. And yes, I did a parody of Band On The Run for the cover of Weirdoes That Break Out Of Jail, for the benefit of kids whose parents weren't even born when it came out. More than that, I totally forgot to mention to them that that was what I was doing, so the homage will probably go unrecognised by all concerned.
The ten groups of kids were all asked to suggest a celebrity to appear in my famous "treads on a worm" demonstration strip, and ended up choosing Tom Jones, Simon Cowell twice (he was, as usual, suggested as one of the 4 names we choose from in 75% of classes), Benedict Cumberbatch, Kim Jong-Un, Warwick Davies, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Kim Kardashian and The Queen.
In 7 days I drove from Clevedon to Lockerbie, via Glasgow to Berwick Upon Tweed, to Ripon (where I had to scrape snow off my car in the morning, for the first and possibly last time this winter), to Kibworth, to Peterborough, to Harrogate, back to Clevedon, and to Warminster and back. Which, is, by my reckoning, 1256 miles. And with an average of 25 kids in each class plus teachers, I drew just north of 250 caricatures. You're welcome.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. View the new promo video here.
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