Meeting Morris Gleitzman

I mentioned in my previous post that we go to a lot of free events, held at our local Library. Well, last week my eldest children and I attended a meet and greet with acclaimed children's author Morris Gleitzman. My kids were pretty excited to meet him having read his collaborations with Paul Jennings. 

Q and A time with Morris Gleitzman

Gleitzman was here to promote his new book Loyal Creatures, which is based on a 20 minute play also written by the author.  He bought with him an actor who performed the monologue. It is an amazingly, heart wrenching tale of a 16 yr youth, turned, Light Horseman who was sent off to war. The performance was outstanding and there was was hardly a dry eye in the room as the exceptional actor (whose name evades me) bought the character of Frank to life. Morris said the play and book was inspired by the War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, except his story tells the other side of what happened to other horses after the war. Here is the script for Morris' play Loyal Creatures
If you are interested. Try and read that without getting emotional!

Afterwards there was a Q & A with Gleitzman in which he was asked many questions, mostly by young children relating to one of his previous books which was titled Bumface. It was really great to hear him talk about his other books and I'm looking forward to reading some of his work. Afterwards Moriss signed copies of his books and we all enjoyed  a free supper of cheese, crackers, cold meat and dips.  It was a definitely a great frugal night out!