Our very first Mr Coconut workshop was on World Book at our local Middle Street Primary School in Brighton. Catherine and I took along Mr Coconut himself (or rather his puppet), who was a little embarrassed as he sat in front of the whole school to have his story read out in assembly.
For the rest of the day we had a group of twelve children from years 3 to 6, whom we showed the process of making a picture book: storymining, where we extract the stories already inside the children’s heads by plying them with questions; storyboarding, where we plot out the stories as images so that they fit into the book; and illustration, where we make puppets from the story characters, and a backdrop, and end up with a (more or less) finished illustration from the book. (See further down the page for the final illustrations…)
Thanks to all the children who took part – we had a great day! If you are interested in our workshops, do get in contact!
Here are some of the stories (if you were one of the children who took part, and you want to print out your illustration, just drag your images to the desktop – this should give you a high resolution printable image):
Ammabelle
Ammabelle read her story out to everyone at the end of the day – and was unfazed when she realised she hadn’t written it all down, and read it out from blank pages anyway…
The story – ‘In the Dark’: The owls in the forest hated the dark and, with the help of a hedgehog, dug for treasure to brighten up the world – but without reckoning on the pirates who protected the treasure…
Bruno
Cinnamon
The story: When Licquorice the cat’s mum dies, he is sent to the College for Animals. But because it was boring he ran away to the woods, where he discovered that he was changing into a human being…
Eden
Joe
The story: Everyone thinks David is a shrunken form of the footballer David Sturridge. And they suspect that the real David Sturridge is actually a vampire…
Plum
The story: Patch the hedgehog could not hibernate, as she could not dig any holes due to her lack of claws. She asks for help from her friends – but suspects that Raven might want to eat her instead…
Stella
The story: Brian the chicken helps the farm animals escape from the evil farmer, firstly by feeding them glow-in-the-dark pills, and then by making them wings…
Tino
The story: Tiger the leopard’s father was captured, and his mother shot by hunters. And when Tiger tried to live with his friend Roy the lion, Roy’s father cast him out because of a long ago fight with Tiger’s father…
Year 6 (Eliot, Lily, Ruby & Ruby)
Year 6 decided their were going to collaborate on a story, which turned into something more text than images (they even made time to make sure it had a proper ending). And instead of illustrating a page Lily spend the whole day carefully making a puppet Boo, and they made the library that features in the story, along with a number of the books inside (my favourite book title: The Tallest of Two Cities).
The story: A boy called Boo lives in a grey world filled with boring grey people, whereas Boo and his family were all colourful. Through reading natural history books in the library he discovers that the rest of the world is colourful as well, and sets out to discover it…
