Book Adventurers: Cas Lester
This summer, we’re asking children – where will you go?
To become a book adventurer this summer, all children have to do is download our free make-at-home passport. Once they’ve started reading and checking places off their lists, they can cut out the stamps included in the passport pack and glue them in. We’ve left space to write on each stamp where you’ve traveled that week – whether it’s Narnia, the circus or the wild plains of Africa!
To help them and you get inspired, we’ve asked some brilliant children’s authors to tell us about the book that never failed to take them to another world when they were children. In today’s post, we hear from children’s author Cas Lester!
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
When I was five I decided I wanted to live with Winnie the Pooh – and I still do. I’m sure there’s plenty of room for us both in his house. His home is my idea of heaven. It’s handy for the ‘100 Aker Wood’, has cupboards full of ‘HUNNY’ and it’s always time for ‘a little smackerel of something’. We could do our ‘Stoutness Exercises’ together in front of the mirror every morning. To be honest, if I lived with Pooh Bear and ate all that hunny, I’d probably have to do them several times a day.
When I look at the picture of Pooh Bear sitting outside his house (‘under the name of Sanders’) I always think there’s a perfect space for me to sit next to him on the log. I could help him on his adventures catching heffalumps and woozles. (I’m bigger and braver than Piglet.) And I’d eagerly join in with the chorus of ‘Sing Ho! for the life of a Bear!’ on the Expotition to the North Pole.
I can vividly remember reading Winnie-the-Pooh for the first time. In fact, it’s the first book I can remember reading all by myself. I was five years old, and sitting in the back of the car, going home from the bookshop. I loved it then and I love it now. It’s like an old friend.
I can’t imagine a better way of spending the long summer holiday playing in the ‘100 Aker Wood’, going where it’s ‘Nice for Piknicks’, and seeing ‘Where the Woozle Wasn’t’ and idling away endless days with Pooh Bear and his friends. Although I am a bit jealous of Christopher Robin – but then he got to be Captain of the upside-down umbrella that was the good ship ‘Brain of Pooh’. And I desperately wanted to be the one who nailed Eeyore’s tail back on. (I’m actually pretty good with a hammer.)
And, for a ‘Silly Old Bear’, Pooh Bear is pretty wise.
‘“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting to-day?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s the same thing,” he said.’
See? Isn’t that the perfect way to start a day?
Cas spent many years having a fabulous time and a great deal of fun making children’s TV dramas with CBBC. Her programmes, which include ‘Big Kids’, and ‘The Story of Tracy Beaker’, were nominated for numerous awards.
Now she’s having a fabulous time and a great deal of fun writing funny books full of mischief and mayhem for children. Her book series include the HARVEY DREW AND THE BIN MEN FROM OUTER SPACE comedy space trash adventures and the NIXIE THE BAD,BAD FAIRY books about a mischievous tomboy fairy who is better with a spanner than she is with a magic wand.
Find out more about Cas on her website, follow her on Twitter and start reading her latest book, Nixie: Splashy Summer Swim, here!
