St Anne's Primary pupils in Denton celebrated a special competition win when they welcomed renowned children's author Christopher Lloyd to the school.

He talked about his new book ‘It’s Up to Us - A Children’s Terra Carta for Nature, People and Planet’.

The book, with forward by His Royal Highness Prince Charles, has been illustrated by 33 amazing award-winning artists from around the world and takes children on a beautiful, lyrical and thought-provoking voyage through nature, the threats the environment faces and an action plan for the planet for the future.

Christopher said: “The book is designed to explain to children how nature works, before mankind messed around with it. 

“Then there is a section about what people have done to nature to put it out of balance and then it explains the problems of climate change for future generations.

“The Terra Carta is a new set of rules in the spirit of the Magna Carta to enable children to talk to the adults of the world about how we protect the planet for the future.”

Chris said he is very passionate about spreading the message to young people and is keen to enlist them in speaking with their parents, grandparents and teachers.

Key Stage 2 teacher Simone Potter said the school had won a competition to enlist Chris’s talents.

“We were lucky enough to be one of the schools in the borough to get shortlisted for the opportunity for Christopher to come in and visit us.

“We are encouraging children to read more and particularly for pleasure so the opportunity for them to meet a real author was a good opportunity to encourage that,” she said.

“We want to engage with children to encourage more reading and the experience of meeting an author could be one they would never get otherwise.” 

Simone added: “As a school we try to enhance the lives of all the children and if we can provide something for them like this, then that’s a really good opportunity.

“The children have loved it and for this subject Chris is the first visitor for us after Covid, so it’s lovely to be able to open our doors once again and offer people in again after the pandemic and has been magical.”

Reading and writing have inevitably been hit by the pandemic with a lot of focus at the moment on improving children’s oracy skills.

Simone explained: “The focus is really on speaking and listening skills and getting children to talk, because the pandemic has deprived children of having that communication with their peers and not always with the family either because a lot of people worked throughout the pandemic still.

“Online learning didn’t enable children to build and enjoy the kind of  banter they get as a group either,” she said.

Chris, who is an author of a number of children’s books, concluded his visit at the end of the day by signing some of his books for the pupils.

You can hear more about Christopher’s visit on Thursday night's Reporter Show on Tameside Radio 103.6FM at 7pm.

Read more from the Tameside Reporter

Click here for more of the latest news

Click here to read the latest edition of the paper online

Click here to find out where you can pick up a copy of the paper