As you all know I’m a member of CWISL – the Children’s writers and illustrators in South London – a not-for-profit organization that promotes literacy and reading within our local communities in and around South London. 
Sam Osman who also writes as Sam Hepburn, the author of Quick Silver and Margaret Bateson-Hill, the author of Dragon Racer trilogy are the brains behind CWIZZ. This time they were also joined by Sara Grant, author of Dark Parties and Magic Trix.
This is how it works!
Schools from South London are invited to a literary quiz. One of the schools offers to be the host. Last year it was Dulwich Prep and this year it was Allens in Dulwich. Each school sends one or more teams of literary quizzers.
The CWISL authors rally around the leadership team and prepare questions, donate their books as prizes and even offer a free school visit as prizes. This year we had the lovely Mo O’Hara, author of My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish do the MC and she was brilliant. (see below – Sara Grant and Mo, running the event)
This was my first CWIZZ. I volunteered to help out, donate books and offer a school visit. It was great fun watching students answer questions from classics to contemporary literature. During the rounds, we also asked the questions created by the participants. We gave away books as prizes and I love that. When I was growing up, only books were given as prizes in our school. The only books I owned were prizes.
We had the lovely PeaGreen Boat Books come and open their pop-up shop with our books on display. We had our lovely CWISL authors to do the marking – Judy Allen, Patricia Elliott, Lydia Syson, Amanda Swift and Jo Franklin and our treasurer Beverley Birch checking and totalling with the amazing librarian Katie from Dulwich Prep, it was all very organised.
I loved it because it was my first visit inside the Great Hall in Allens. It was like visiting Malory Towers from Enid Blyton, with paintings on the walls, high ceilings, big spaces.
Every author had to ask a question to give away a prize. My question was based on my book A Dollop of Ghee and a Pot of Wisdom from Walker Books. The question was easy! Many hands went up.
The question was “What is Ghee?”
And the answer is – it is clarified butter. I always thought that was funny. It is as if like the butter had doubts and we had to clarify something to it. I’m happy that the butter is now clarified. Because I love ghee better than butter.
Then I picked a school for a School Visit and it was St. Martins in the Fields from Tulse Hill. I’ll be visiting their Creative Writing Group this month. What a great way to start spring.
I wish these kind of events were there when I grew up. I didn’t get to meet real authors, have librarians run creative writing workshops and arrange literary quizzes.
Back to the CWIZZ – The competition was tough. For the first time we had joint winners for 2nd and 3rd places.
1st place went to ‘We Don’t Know’ (Emanuel)
Joint 2nd
”Oracles’ Dulwich Prep and
‘Streatham Sherlockians’ (Streatham and Clapham High School)
Joint 3rd
‘We Shot The Albatross’ (Dulwich Prep)
‘Crunchies’ ( Darrick Wood)
The students who won the various books then started hunting their authors down for autographs. It was a great joy to watch kids who love books and who know so much about the books and authors.
My first big event with CWISL has turned out to be fantastic. I’m looking forward to more!
Check out my Events page to find out where I’ll be in March and April 2014. If I am in your neighbourhood, come and say hello.