We are thrilled to present a special video message from our Children’s Laureate, the children’s author Saman Shamsie, recorded under lockdown at her home in Karachi.
Saman has been supporting our library campaign for the best part of eight years joining in Children’s Events on National Libraries Day and many other occasions. When the library was first started in the office of Notary Public, Jackie Bunce-Linsell, Jackie commissioned Saman to write a delightful short story for the children of the library , The Hurricane Fairy, which Saman reads here:
The other two videos are short readings from her books:, The Adventures of Slothful Slough-Off …
and The Magical Woods, published by Oxford University Preface.
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Saman’s ongoing work with the Library – The Creative Writing Challenge
In 2015 Saman, and Suzanne Morpurgo, launched the Saman Shamsie Summer Creative Writing Challenge. 0pen to young writers between the ages of 4-14, this unique project asks entrants to create their own stories and make them into book form with covers designed to include key features of published books.
The stories are collected in tree volumes. Sir Michael Morpurgo the distinguished children’s author, has written a Preface to the ‘Young Writers’ Anthology’ as it is called. The inaugural volume was launched and ‘published’ – placed on the Library shelves – by the children themselves.
To date, some sixty-five budding authors have received impressive Certificates from the hands of Ms Shamsie.
This year, Saman was unable to come to the UK from Pakistan where she teaches at Karachi Grammar School because of travel restrictions. Both she and Suzanne are extremely grateful that our local writer, Hashi Mohamed, author of People Like Us, has kindly agreed to present the Certificates in her stead.
