About me!

Melody (Mel) works part time as a teaching consultant in Primary schools in Coventry, specialising in dance and P.E. This followed a long career teaching full time as a Primary School teacher in Birmingham and Coventry schools; also as an AST for Coventry – helping to inspire young teachers especially in dance. She has also worked at Warwick university with trainee teachers.

The stories were first started to provide a resource for Mel’s literacy lessons and then continued just for fun. Mel wanted to write stories that could be told or read in 10 minutes. School timetables are so packed that lengthy luxurious listening sessions are a thing of the past. So rather than miss out altogether, these stories can be enjoyed whenever the teacher – or child has a free ten minutes. They could also be used for Guided reading sessions as (hopefully!) they contain examples of good writing practice.

More importantly she thinks that they are good fun to read and will appeal to boys and girls of KS2 who have been told to put down their computer games for 10 minutes.

They have all been inspired by real events and observations of teachers and children and that Mel has taught. Indeed the stories were rescued by a child in her class after they were lost!

The endings are quite strange and leave the reader thinking. Maybe a children’s version of “Tales of the Unexpected”

Mel lives in Coventry with her husband Alan. Her daughter Jessica lives in Slough – she is also in the book!
Mel enjoys dancing at the Dance exchange in Birmingham with a KFA Creative Performance Group, keeping fit, cycling, theatre, reading and of course writing.

The Illustrator Beth Blake

Beth currently works as a teaching assistant at a Coventry School where she and Mel first met. Mel was impressed by her obvious talent and asked her if she could find time in between her full time job and raising her family to produce some illustrations to help bring the stories alive; after asking children in her class whether they thought the book should be illustrated; which they responded to with a resounding “yes”.

The result is a delightful book cover guaranteed to attract attention and a series of super illustrations which really capture the mood of each story.