Are you looking for a different kind of kid’s event for your book, literary or any other kind of festival or gathering? If so, we might have just the thing for you. For more information, read on and to enquire about booking a festival event, or if you need any additional information, email us on info[at]pictishbeastpublications.com.
Based around individual books in our Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia factual children’s book series, we offer interactive and fun-filled author-led events that will engage children with reading non-fiction. Depending on the book the event is based on, children can discover how many of them it would take to be the same length as a blue whale (from an event based on our Mammals book), how to build and fire a giant catapult called a trebuchet that was used to attack castles before cannons were invented (from an event based on our Castles book), how far apart all the planets in our solar system would be we lay them out using a scale of one centimetre for every one million kilometres (from an event based on our Solar System book), how big a killer whale is and why they’re not really suited for life in captivity (from an event based on our Scotland’s Dolphins book) and whether the Loch Ness Monster really could be a relic from the age of the dinosaurs (from an event based on our Scotland’s Folklore book).
These events are aimed at children between the ages of six and twelve, and are led by Colin M. Drysdale, the creator and author of the Draw your Own Encyclopaedia series. He has spent the last twenty-five years working as a research biologist, and has studied animals ranging in size from as big as blue whale to as small as a shrew. He has provided advice to a number of nature documentaries, and has even appeared in one about the Thames whale (where he discovered that one of the last things it ever ate was a potato!). His first foray into writing factual books for children was Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Mammals, but he has an eclectic range of interests, and has since written a further eleven books in the same series covering different animals groups, the wildlife of Scotland, Scottish castles, Scottish folklore, and our solar system. He honed his skills as an entertainer working as a street-artist juggling machetes (amongst other things) on Buchanan Street in Glasgow to help fund his Ph.D. and has performed at Bright Club (the stand-up show for academics) with a routine based around his work as a biologists, and the strange things that that sometimes entails doing.
So, if you’re running a book or literary festival (or, indeed, any other type of festival) and think that an event based around one of our Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia books might be just what you’re looking for, get in touch to let us know, and we can put something together that will be fun (and educational) for children between the ages of six and twelve, while fitting in with your schedule and your requirements.