On Friday 3rd December we will be welcoming best-selling author Sally Gardner to St Gregory’s. She will speak to students in Years 7-9 about two of her best-selling books. Sally Gardner is the award-winning novelist who has sold over 2 million books in the UK and her work has been translated to more than 22 languages.

Her stories range from retellings of fairy stories for emerging readers, to the ‘Wings & Co’ series for younger junior age children, through to ‘I Coriander’ and ‘Maggot Moon’ for teenagers, for which she won the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the Costa Children’s Book Prize.

Her historical fiction novel for Young Adults, ‘I, Coriander’, won the Smarties Children’s Book Prize in 2005. Her action-packed French Revolution thriller ‘The Silver Blade’, sequel to ‘The Red Necklace’ (2007), was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 2009. Actor Dominic West (‘The Wire’) has bought the film rights to both ‘The Red Necklace’ and ‘The Silver Blade’.

Sally Gardner continues to be an avid spokesperson for Dyslexia, working to change the way it is perceived by society. She is dyslexic and argues that it is not a disability, but a gift. Sally strongly believes that children should not be patronised. She is opposed to the limiting expectations set for children and thinks books must successfully challenge or inspire their remarkable intellects and imaginations.