Books Alive provides real opportunities for children to enjoy creating their own dramas and presentations of the best of children’s literature, with the inspirational help of professional artists.

Pam Wardell as ‘Mrs Armitage on Wheels’

Having worked in education, broadcasting and the arts for forty years, I am convinced of the impact of high quality imaginative resources on young people’s skills and development in the expressive arts.

My approach is to motivate children to use all the paraphernalia of the theatre to tell or present their own version of a story. So by using their own voices and action, props and costume, music and sound effects, they bring the characters and language of a story ‘alive’, sometimes for an audience and sometimes just for sheer fun.

When I can, I invite professional artists from the worlds of theatre, the visual arts and broadcasting to contribute their ideas and skills to the whole process. I find their involvement stimulates the children’s own expressive and aesthetic development in a unique way, and adds an exciting resource for imaginative language development and creative activities in classrooms, libraries, and beyond.

Wherever they happen - in school, after school, in libraries, at festivals - all my workshops are action-packed fun-filled irresistible opportunities for children and young people to develop creative and confident self-expression.