Book festival opens this weekend for anniversary celebrations

Since its beginnings in 1998, the literary festival has grown and developed from being the country’s only one dedicated entirely to children’s authors and illustrators.

As well as its public ticketed events, it has responded to the needs of the primary school sector across Shropshire, and each year also delivers a reading development projects to thousands of pupils at primary schools across the county.

On Saturday (4), to mark Shrewsbury Bookfest’s 21st year, one of Britain’s most successful children’s authors and Children’s Laureate (2005-2007), Jacqueline Wilson, will be in town for a ticketed event at Prestfelde School in the morning. She will then make a very special public appearance at around 2pm in the Square to cut the Bookfest Birthday cake and to award prizes to the winners of the Bookfest Creative Writing Competition.

The stories from these winners have shone through 1000 entries from budding young authors across the county as part of the organisation’s bi-annual Schools’ Week project. The winning stories are being narrated by BBC Radio Shropshire and will be available to download from the Shrewsbury Bookfest website.

During Saturday, children and their families will be able to drop in on a number of free literary related activities in The Square.

There will also be a Bookfest Quest, a trail of ‘birthday balloons’ around the town. These birthday balloons have been created by 14 local primary schools and each one celebrates significant birthdays of some of the very best-loved children’s books.

Aardman Animations will be back on Sunday (5), offering children and grown ups the chance to make their very own Morph, Shaun the Sheep or Feathers McGraw clay models under expert guidance from one of the studio’s top model-makers.

And younger children are set to be enchanted by a rich mix of storytelling, physical theatre, clowning, puppetry and music and song from Theatre Fideri Fidera and their award-winning production of ‘Oskar’s Amazing Adventure’.

This production has won the Primary Time's Best Children's Play Award.

Shrewsbury Bookfest is a registered charity, run predominantly by volunteers and all fundraising is executed by its team of volunteers who are dedicated to support the delivery of the projects to Shropshire primary schools. Around 40 per cent of the project costs is covered by the nominal fees paid by schools to take part. The significant shortfall is met following successful applications by Shrewsbury Bookfest to trusts and foundations.

Tickets to the events are available from shrewsburybookfest.co.uk