Award-winning children’s author Christopher Edge recently visited Corby Business Academy to deliver an exciting, interactive assembly to our Year 7 cohort.

Christopher’s latest book – ‘Black Hole Cinema Club’ was chosen as this year’s transition book for our ‘Big Read’ and every student in Year 7 was gifted a copy of the book when they visited in July for their transition day.

During Library lessons this term, Year 7 have been reading and discussing ‘Black Hole Cinema Club’ and we have been completing activities based on the book. This all led up to a fantastic visit from Christopher himself, allowing students to meet an author in real life.

Christopher’s assembly to Year 7 involved an interactive experience, where students had to work out the clues based on different movies and genres to figure out the final clue. All the teams that participated had a blast and had help from the entire year group to get them through each task.

Students were able to bring their copies of the book along to have them signed by Christopher at the meet and greet event afterwards, with some students then attending a smaller writing workshop in the library.

During the workshop, Christopher gave our budding writers hints and tips on what it takes to become a writer, what things to think about and how big ideas can grow from the smallest of sparks. Working in pairs and small groups, our students came up with some fantastic ideas about where they would set their own escape room task, including abandoned hospitals, an aquarium and a lava filled volcanic cave in the mountains!

Librarian, Mrs Keelan said ‘Christopher was a brilliant visiting author and delivered a very exciting session for Year 7 to enjoy. It was fantastic to see how many students engaged with the session and reading in general. Hopefully Christopher’s visit, having their own copy of the book and the work we have been doing in Library lessons will help to kick start and reinforce a love of reading for pleasure amongst our youngest students. What an amazing start to their school journey at CBA.’

Here's what some of our Year 7 students had to say about Christopher’s visit:

“Quite inspiring, enjoyable and great fun to be asked up on stage to participate.’ – Maisie Year 7

“It was very, very cool to have an author come and see us in real life” – Lloyd Year 7

“I’ve never met an author before so it was really fun to meet someone who had written their own book and is famous” – Rhys Year 7.