Diary of a Wimpy Kid author gives pupils a morning to remember
A school hall became the centre for a live-stream session with one of the world's best-loved authors.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney was the guest of honour at the Big School hall at Wolverhampton Grammar School for the live-stream event, which saw 60,000 pupils from 800 schools across the country take part.
Those lucky enough to be in the hall from the Grammar School on Thursday saw Jeff interviewed by head librarian Zoe Rowley about his new book Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot and his life as an author and cartoonist.
He said he had started out wanting to be a cartoonist in the newspapers, but after finding his work wasn't seen as good enough, began writing up the ideas for the book, basing a lot of Greg Heffley and his friends on his experiences growing up.
The event, which was organised by Authors Aloud UK, also saw questions from some of the 70 pupils in the hall, as well as collection of questions from schools as far away as Plymouth and Cornwall and in Swindon, Bristol, Coventry and Nottingham.
Jeff also treated the audience to a draw-a-long tutorial on how to draw Greg, even attempting to do it blindfolded, and gave two super-fans a quiz on the book series, which has sold more than 250 million copies world-wide.
The event helped to launch the new book and also followed on from the Big Show Drive-thru experience, which saw people drive through a sports-themed obstacle course, before being given a signed copy by Jeff at the end.
He said the school had been the perfect place to launch the book, saying it had a feel of Hogwarts to it, and said the Q&A had turned out better than he had expected.
He said: "We kind of felt like we were flying by the seat of our pants a little bit, but it felt like a fully produced show and all credit to Mrs Rowley, who was put on the spot as the interviewer.
"It was the perfect school for us as it had the right size and the right grounds for what we were doing."
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot is available to buy now.