Author Visit - Stewart Sutters

Dear One Degree Academy.

Thank you for the amazing and warm welcome on Wednesday 21st May, during my school visit. I felt hugely privileged to be able to visit your school and share some of the day with students from St. Mary’s, Roehampton and then Bournemouth and Northampton classes in assembly. And a big thank you to the students who looked after me during lunch. It is quite scary to stand up in front of a class of children and share your story. As an author/illustrator, you never know if they are going to like it or not. I loved all the questions, including some of the awkward ones, and ones you least expect. Certainly, keeps you on your toes. A particular shout-out to one of the boys in Roehampton who guessed my age at 41. I’ll take that.

I wish I could have filmed the reaction on the students' faces when I showed them an actual Stewbot robot that I built. I would watch it back every day.

It is the one reason I started this tough journey into becoming a children's picture book author/illustrator. I only wish I could have chatted for hours and hours as the students genuinely seemed interested in my work and process. I would love to have spoken more to Year 3 about the animations they are currently making in Computing.

It was also so lovely to meet the students with their parents/guardians at the book fair. A massive thank you for those students who queued up to buy a book.

One of the questions from the children yesterday was "are you famous?” ... Well, during my visit to One Degree Academy, the students and teachers certainly made me feel famous.

I look forward to coming back to the school as soon as my next book is ready, and I would love One Degree to be one of the first schools to read it.

PS. I look forward to the new robot thank you appreciation. My personal favourite was the Elvis one!

Kind regards,

Stewart