Recently I had my inaugural visit to Comely Park Primary School, where I was introduced to pupils and staff as their new Patron of Reading. A huge hall with over 400 children greeted me, and it was at this final whole-school assembly that I was able to say how honoured I was to be “adopted” by the school to encourage a love of reading and writing.
My first task as Patron was to announce the winner of the School Makar, an honorary post for one lucky pupil who will write poems about school events. The winner was Ruby in P5/1, and she will have her work published in the school newsletter and here on my blog.
Following our presentation, Yvonne Manning of Falkirk Libraries told everyone about the Summer Reading Challenge and encouraged pupils to choose six books on this year’s Creepy House theme to read over the holidays. Children can also design their own scary monster, get ideas for books they might try and enter competitions HERE.
Once the assembly was over I went round a number of classes to chat with the children and read them stories. My able guides Kelsey and Logan took me round the whole school and looked after me very well!
At the end of my visit I was presented with two amazing gifts from Miss Lucas’s P4 class! One was a set of coasters which were illustrated with drawings of Gallus the Craw, a character they have developed and hope to incorporate into a picture book (with a little help from me!)
You can see that the little rhyming verses are written in the Scots Leid which is something I am not an expert in at all! I understood the first three: Gallus the crow is golfing with his dad; Gallus the crow doesn’t like insects at all; Gallus the crow is chatting with his mum; but the last one had me stumped! It had a new Scots word I’d never seen before: tapsalteerie. As you can guess from the picture, it means upside-down. Gallus the crow is upside-down on the wall.
The other lovely gift Miss Lucas presented me with was a bilingual picture book created by her P4 class. It’s called The Wee Bannock and is written in both English and Scots. It’s a really fun story about a bannock (a bun made with raisins and sultanas) who escapes all sorts of people who want to eat him. Here’s Kelsey’s illustration showing the bannock getting caught by a fish hook in a river:
I’m looking forward to the new school term when I can go back to Comely Park Primary and work with the children on a wide range of exciting projects! In the meantime, have a great holiday, everyone!
Lynne Rickards author 
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hi lynne
Hi Abbie!
Dear Lynne, so great to see you again, though I wish we had more time. I am going to Gullane in the Easter holidays and can’t wait. Are you and your family going anywhere? I will go to a nice beach to see my dog swimming in the sea while attempting to fetch a stick! My dad’s university pal has a holiday home that we get a discount on.
See you, Ruby
Hi Ruby,
It was great to see you too, after almost a year! You are getting very grown up. I didn’t know where Gullane was so I had to Google it. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely holiday there, and your dog is going to love it! I’m not going anywhere over Easter but we are trying to decide what to do for our summer holidays. Maybe Mallorca, maybe Dubrovnik in Croatia…
Thanks for writing and I’ll get searching for all your poems very soon so I can put them up on their own new page of the blog. Have a great holiday and I’ll talk to you soon!
Lynne x
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