Right Royal Reading Challenge

Photo: Clarence House

It was the grand official opening of the new Exeter Library yesterday, and I went along to help Sarah McIntyre, who was doing an event there in her capacity as illustrator for this year's Summer Reading Challenge - young readers borrowing books from UK libraries over the summer holidays will be able to collect the poster and stickers she's drawn. Also visiting the library was HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, on plaque-unveiling duty, and she sat in on Sarah's session for a while.

This made for quite a hectic event - Sarah was having to compete with choirs singing in the neighbouring room, and press photographers talking at the tops of their voices, even interupting her in the middle of her event to ask her where Camilla would be sitting - to them, the audience of kids from St Leonard's Primary School were just props in a Royal Photo Op (you can see why the paparazzi aren't popular).  Anyway, McIntyre pulled it off, as usual, and Camilla very gamely drew a sea monkey (or, as the Daily Express describes it, 'a creature with strange but vaguely familiar large ears'). Here she is with the copy of Oliver and the Seawigs which we gave her (the lady next to her is Ciara Eastell, Devon County Council's Head of Libraries). There's a full report of these Exciting Royal Events on Sarah's blog.

Photo: Sarah Reeve



1 comments:

Jack said...

That is great there is so much put into books and reading still. Reading is slipping and it is one thing I think is important and needs to be treated as such

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