Sarah Brennan Funny & Fabulous Blog

A big thank you to the American School in London!

A big hello and thank you to the fabulous kids and staff of the American International School in London – we had a big day! Chester Choi visited the Grade 3s, Pin Yin Panda visited the Grade 6s, and we all had a lot of fun! Many thanks to the lovely librarians at ASL, Head Librarian Karen Field (on the right above) and Lower School Librarian Joanne Morris (on the left), for asking me! And here are some very handsome ASL kids!:

Kung Hei Fat Choi and thanks to ISL Surrey!

A big hello to all you International School of London Surrey students who are visiting my blog tonight! It was great to meet you all today and I do hope you enjoyed our reading and workshop sessions as much as I did! And thanks especially to the lovely librarian Vickie Doran for looking after me so well today and organising our very busy schedule – I don’t know how you do it!

A wonderful day at Windlesham House School!

A big hello to all the terrific students of Windlesham House School – it was great to meet you all today! What with writing workshops for the big kids and story readings for the younger kids, it was a busy day! Many thanks to Aly Thornton, Librarian extraordinaire, for looking after me so handsomely, and to Simon Attwood, Deputy Headmaster, for inviting me! Here’s my panda Pandora having a chat to some of the students today!

Farewell Edinburgh!

What a fun three days that was! Pin Yin Panda and I had such a wonderful time meeting the braw Scots of Edinburgh, their lassies and laddies and of course, their new pandas!

Here’s me with my new toy panda Pandora (Pin Yin’s Scottish cousin) and a huge blow up panda outside Edinburgh Zoo!

And here’s Pandora with the famous Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat far away in the background!

Thank you George Watson’s College!

Many thanks to the lovely teachers and fabulous Grade 3s of George Watson’s College in Edinburgh for a terrific reading session this morning! Pin Yin Panda and I were delighted to meet you all! Make sure you enter my Clever Competition about Pandas!

Hello to a real Edinburgh Zoo panda … and a couple of furry pretenders…

What a fun day I had today launching The Tale of Pin Yin Panda at Edinburgh Zoo! It was SUCH a thrill to meet Tian Tian, one of the Zoo’s real life pandas, and to read her The Tale of Pin Yin Panda about her fictional (and very cheeky) Chinese cousin! Here she is in the background in her indoor enclosure – she’s gorgeous!

And here are a couple of furry pretend pandas in the Gift Shop:-

Tian Tian is such a Sweetie!

Thank you Julie Preston, Events Manager, and Rachel Goddard, Press Officer, for a fabulous day! I look forward to more Panda-monium tomorrow! And special thanks to photographer Alan Simpson who took these wonderful photos and let me use them for my blog!

And a special hello to Emily Tullett!

Hello to Emily Tullett, a fine Scottish lassie and a fine writer too! I met Emily’s grand-dad Neil Revie on the Great Wall of China during my trip to Beijing in December, and his lovely grand-daughter Emily wrote to me to tell me all about her own writing! So I was thrilled to meet her and her family at the Edinburgh Zoo today just before the official launch of The Tale of Pin Yin Panda!

A Lovely Day at Lambrook School!

Hello all you fabulous kids and dedicated teachers at Lambrook School in Ascot! Thank you for a great day yesterday. It was FANTASTICO! MAGNIFICO! EXCELLENTE! meeting you all!! Keep up the reading and writing…and enter my Clever Competition – that’s an order!

Thank you Lord Patten of Barnes!

This evening I met with the Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes (last Governor of Hong Kong and now Chairman of the BBC Trust and Chancellor of Oxford University) at his offices near the Houses of Parliament to give him some signed copies of The Tale of Pin Yin Panda for his eight grandchildren! Lord Patten was kind enough to write a lovely blurb about Pin Yin Panda for the back of the book in which he mentioned his grandchildren, so naturally I wanted to give them all a copy! We had a lovely chat about his memories of Hong Kong and his recent visit there with his extended family, and he told me that his time in Hong Kong as Governor was one of the happiest times of his life. A big thank you to Lord Patten for his time and to his very kind parliamentary secretary Penelope Rankin for arranging our meeting!

Hello to an excellent reader from South Moreton Primary School!

Introducing William Chatterton of South Moreton Primary School, an excellent reader who just loves books! William was a great help to me during my school visit, setting up my display books before my reading session for his class – thank you William… and keep on reading! It will make you happy, healthy, wealthy and wise!