P.6 Enjoy Visit from Author Nicola Pierce

On Wednesday 14th January 2015 P.6 welcomed the author, Nicola Pierce to their classroom.  Children are currently studying the Titanic, as their World Around Us topic and are reading Nicola's fiction book called 'Spirit of the Titanic'.  Nicola spoke to both P.6 classes about how she got the idea for this story and how she spent over 6 weeks researching the Titanic before she could start writing her story.  The children found out that the main character of the book was based on a real person, Samuel Scott, the first boy who was killed during the building of Titanic.  Nicola explained to the children how she went to search for Samuel's grave as part of her research but couldn't find it initially as it was unmarked.  After asking a few people about the possibility of marking Samuel's grave Nicola was delighted when a headstone was erected prior to Titanic's centenary.  She also showed the children a replica rivet and shared some fantastic photographs of Titanic from the building stage right up until its sinking.  She spoke passionately about what happened to Titanic and shared many emotional stories about passengers and crew members. 

Pupils were totally engaged, listened enthusiastically and were very excited to to be able to ask Nicola some really interesting questions. Pupils found out that Nicola doesn't write in the same place as she finds this a bit boring and prefers to sometimes simply take her notebook and pen to a quiet coffee shop to write.  When asked what advice she would give to any budding authors Nicola said READ as much as you can, as this will in turn enable you to see what is interesting or not.  Reading is the thing she likes to do best, even before writing!

We would like to thank Nicola for coming into our school and sharing her wealth of knowledge with the children. We thoroughly enjoyed listening to her and pupils undoubtedly gained much from the experience.