The afternoon’s workshop at the British Library began with a presentation that helped the eight children understand the mood of terror.
Sights and sounds, ghosts, enormous spiders, zombies, mummies and pirates found their way into ideas children expressed before they began to write.
And then, I gave them their prompt –
The crows cried out in the distance. Hundreds, thousands of crows perched on the roof of the old, empty house. Then, the door opened …
I was prepared for a creepy story.
I got eight creepy stories.
One wrote of the ‘Door of No Return’.
An old violinist opened the door …
A tremendous sound echoed.
NEXT LEVEL! flashed the computer screen.
Another wrote about three children being whisked away into a mirror in the haunted house. And then, the ghost of Mr Scribble Hopper wrote the names of the three children on a piece of paper listing the children he had killed.
What a thrilling afternoon it was!
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