Harvey Cooper received a special surprise from his favourite authors.
Harvey’s favourite place at school every morning is the library and his routine is to take all of the 13 Storey Treehouse books and read them out loud with gusto. He does different voices and includes his Learning Assistants in this storytelling. He also uses the characters to act out different scenarios and tell his own stories. “You can see how immersed he is in the world they’ve created in their books” said Nayland College Librarian Tracey Winslade.
Back in May, Tracey wrote a letter to the authors of the Treehouse series Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton and told them all about Harvey and what a huge impact their books have had with helping him settle into college life. Tracey received an email response from Jill Griffiths (co writer and character in the book) who was thrilled to hear of Harvey’s story and wanted to send him a special copy of ‘Who’s Who and What’s Where in the Treehouse’.
When Harvey received the parcel, there was a special surprise inside – a hand drawn illustration of Harvey added to the stories accompanied by a personal letter.
Some of the positive spin offs from this experience for Harvey include him writing a thank you letter to the authors for their wonderful gift (an activity that he is not usually too fond of) and branching out to explore other book series including The Diary of the Wimpy Kid series.
Of course none of this would have been possible without such a thoughtful act of kindness from Tracey. “It’s just this love of reading and story – that’s what I really connect with and I think other students feel the joy as well when they come in and hear him” said Tracey. Thank you Tracey for creating such a safe space for our students and all the best for the big move over to your new space this term!
By Sophie Musso