I was rather honoured to be asked to officially open Oak Lodge School's brand new library. Oak Lodge is a school for children with special educational needs, and those needs are extremely varied meaning children of the same age having very mixed abilities in a given subject. I've been to Oak Lodge many times to draw with the children and despite the differing levels of ability when it comes to art, they've always been an enthusiastic, engaged and entertaining bunch.

Following a brief talk to the children in assembly about my books I got to slice the ribbon using an enormous pair of scissors - hand-made by the art teacher. Most impressive. Afterwards I took four workshops with children from years 7 and 8 where we drew step-by-step pictures of characters from my New Forest Friends books. Good fun, plenty of giggles, and a pleasure to be part of it all.