FEATURE St Austell Festival Of Literature

Antony Quinton reports on Families' Day at the St Austell Festival of Children’s Literature on Saturday, 14th June 2025.

The Cornish town of St Austell was the host of a celebration of children’s literature. Children and their parents were able to participate in a variety of activities. They could draw along with illustrators, hear extracts from stories, meet Supertato and make vegetable superheroes and start writing stories of their own.


I attended four of the events. The first took place in the local parish church of Holy Trinity. A venue bedecked with fairy lights and filled to the brim with children and adults ready to draw.

Holy Trinity Church, draw along venue.

Steve May and Steve Webb encouraged the audience to take up their paper and clipboards (kindly provided by the festival volunteers) and draw along. We heard about how both illustrators had started out.

I particularly enjoyed Steve May’s picture of himself at four years old and that he’d probably ask his fifty year old self, “Are you Batman yet?”

He also gave an entertaining account of how he ended up illustrating Journey to Pootopia written by James Turner. This is a humourous guide to digestion.

Steve Webb explained how his wacky superhero series, Peng and Spanners came about. He discussed how he wanted the characters he had created to reflect their characters.


There was plenty of good advice given about how to draw characters. The whole event was enthusiastically received by the children. I think they liked it when Steve Webb went round with a stamper and gave their draw along pictures the ‘pig stamp of approval’.

Lauren’s collection of enamel moth badges.

Lauren Ellen Anderson, author of Marnie Midnight wore her wings to her event; a costume she told us was 90% glue gun!


In the impressive Methodist chapel, Lauren gave a delightful presentation about her journey as an author and illustrator. She described her process for creating the characters in her books. They usually began with a sketch and she showed us the original versions of a few of them.


I loved her description of what was great about being an author, “it’s the power of imagining the impossible.” She advised her young audience to write about what they loved.

 

Once again we were encouraged to draw along and shown how to draw Milo the caterpillar and then create our own spectacular moth.


I appreciated the way Lauren also described her research for Marnie Midnight. She demonstrated her research in the form of a quiz where we had to identify which were the real moth names.

We were also given a preview of how Lauren devised her latest book Dracula and Daughters.

The stage is set for Steve Webb’s draw along.

In a local dance studio, was a lively session with Steve Webb. He gave more details about his Peng and Spanner series. An author who delights in comedy and silliness. He involved the audience in a singalong, evil laughter, lots of drawing and a pizza poll.

 

I really enjoyed how his simple explanations of how to draw his characters helped even non-artists like me make a reasonable version of his characters. I’ve included them below.

Drawn following instructions from Steve Webb.

He explained some of the decisions he had made as an author including the use of news reports as a plot device to give narrative commentary.

Steve’s books are written in comic format and he gave an effective description of how he went from idea to finished book.

Emma Carrol did wonder about speaking from the pulpit!

For the final event of the day, it was back to the Methodist Chapel with its organ and balcony. Emma Carroll led a terrific story-hunting workshop. Before the event even started she wandered amongst the expectant crowd chatting to children.


It was a practical session. We had to think about our favourite children’s books, weather, place and secret talent. Her reason for getting us to think about these things was that “where you write from is deep inside you. What inspires you? What you write is going to be different and original to anyone else writing.”

A mysterious castle: what happens here?

Emma then took us through a series of pictures to use as story prompts. She gave us questions to guide our ideas and then asked the children to tell everyone what they had written.

Using the prompts we ended up taking part in a three minute writing sprint. The extracts read by the children were full of humour, intrigue and imagination. Emma had made her point. We can all be writers. I now have a whole premise ready to go about a doggy chef and a feast that goes awry!

Festival poster

The festival was well-organised and the volunteers in their yellow and blue t-shirts were helpful and friendly. There was also a hub in an old branch of Peacocks where festival goers could pick up free magazines,and bookmarks, do craft activities and see live storytelling.

It was an enjoyable day and inspired the young people who attended to think about reading, writing, drawing and using their imagination.