Not being the greatest whizz at websites and having had the help of friend, Bill, I’ve managed to update a couple of my pages: Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Teenage. I’m quite pleased with myself!! Why don’t you see what I’ve added? Lots of my books and their publishers. Soon I’ll move onto updating Key Stage 2.

I’m really looking forward to my next trip to Broadwater Primary School, Worthing. I had such a lovely visit in March so another visit there will be brilliant. This time, however, it’ll be different. It’s their Meet the Author Day! And there will be seven of us – seven authors in one place to meet children and their parents/carers. I’m looking forward to talking to them, answer their questions, read from my books and hopefully sell quite a few.

Here is a link https://www.broadwater.w-sussex.sch.uk/1538/Authors-to-visit-our-school—Saturday-8th-June

With Key Stage 1 children, I’m featuring Toad Swims for his life, which is great fun to read because the children get to imagine they are the animals that are swimming against and threatening toad. I’ll be showing and telling a few other books for this age group, like Luckily! and some of my early readers published by Maverick, Franklin Watts and Ransom.

With Key Stage 2 children, I’ll concentrate mainly on Sophie’s Secret War, a World War II diary in the My Story series. It’s about Sophie’s experiences in occupied France in 1939-40. In this session, I’ll also be talking about history in fiction and how I research facts and use them within the story, with reference to The Story of the Great Fire of London and I was there: Royal Nursemaid. I hope the children will have lots of questions.

I love visiting schools as author. Mostly, my visits concentrate on The Story of the Great Fire of London, which, amazingly, was published in 1998 and is still in print! It’s aimed at 6-7 year olds. So far, since September 2018, I’ve been to Ashington, Fittleworth, Pulborough and Storrington village schools, and Jessie Younghusband school in Chichester. I love engaging with the children and always receive a warm welcome. I really enjoy these visits and manage to sell some books to the children!

Today, I spent a fantastic morning with two Year 2 classes at Broadwater Primary School, Worthing, concentrating on The Story of The Great Fire of London. Many schools choose the Great Fire as their topic for Year 1 or 2 and the children always become inspired by it. Today’s classes were no exception and the children’s knowledge of the fire was immense. They all participated by asking and answering questions, joining in the oral quiz, helping complete the giant crossword I had complied and listening to part of the story. And I sold 20 books! Thank you Broadwater school!

• Discuss the Great Fire with the children
• Read from my book – get the children to predict what will happen next.
• Show how a book is published – the different stages from hand-written scrawl, through finding an illustrator and putting text and pictures together to the finished book.
• Talk about the senses – how the five senses are engaged through fire – encourage widening of vocabulary.
• Show and read from copy of Pepys diary.
• Demonstrate my simple model of Mr Keeling’s fire engine.
• Children to complete worksheets – questions/simple crossword etc
• Sell copies of The Great Fire of London and other books if the school suggest that.

Since last September, I’ve had some great experiences in school, visiting with my book, The Story of the Great Fire of London, which was published, amazingly, as long ago as 1998 and is still in print! So what do I do on my visits?

Hello – I’m Jill Atkins. I specialise in writing books for younger people: early readers, Key Stages 1 and 2 and teens. Here you will be able to find about about my books, and where you can buy them.

I live with my husband in West Sussex, where we love being near the sea. We have two grown-up children and five grandchildren. I used to be a teacher and now regularly help in our local school.