Mrs Armitage on Wheels: Celebrate Quentin Blake’s 90th Birthday

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I would like you to create a time capsule to remember this extraordinary time we are living in now. He was awarded an OBE in 1988, and a CBE in 2005, for services to Children's Literature. In 1990, he was voted "The Illustrator's Illustrator" by Observer Magazine and in 1999, was appointed the first ever Children's Laureate, a post designed to raise the profile of children's literature. He has also won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration. Blake was knighted in the 2013 New Year Honours for his services to illustration. In March 2014 he was awarded the insignia of Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur at a ceremony at the Institut Français in London

Mrs Armitage on Wheels is a pleasure to read aloud with a class. The prose flows smoothly off the tongue, and the refrains get children joining in. They love the onomatopoeia (crash, crunch, thud!) and the listing of bike modifications which are used with comic effect. The language, which seems simple at first, builds increasingly into adventurous words and phrases which mirror the growing complexity of Mrs Armitage’s bike: don’t be surprised if your class start to speak of ‘complete tool kits’, ‘faithful dogs’ or of things needing ‘a bit of extra oomph’ after repeat readings!Enjoy You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus. Relish the illustrations and amusing scenarios. Invite children to select their favourite and to use because to provide a reason for their opinion, e.g. A whale riding a bike because it is funny to see something so big on something so small. Blake’s dynamic pen strokes typically create odd, unruly characters, almost always seen in concert with children, rendering them in a sprightly manner. As Sue Hubbard, an art critic writing in The Independent, has observed: ‘His drawing is wonderfully free and playful, the colour bleeding with carefree abandon over the ink outlines to give a sense of movement and vitality’. He is now one of Britain’s most popular artists, and so recognizable have Blake’s illustrations become, that his gently anarchic images have spread to greetings cards. In 1999 he was appointed the first Children’s Laureate, and his achievement has recently been marked by a major retrospective exhibition: ‘Quentin Blake: Fifty Years of Illustration’, held at Somerset House in London in 2004. His work was also a major part of the British Council's 'Magic Pencil' Exhibition which began touring the world in 2002, and there are apparently future plans for a Quentin Blake Gallery.

Read You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus. Identify each form of transport. Children discuss which vehicles they have tried; they share their reason for travelling and describe how it felt. You could bury it in a hole in your garden – but it must be in a container that will not biodegrade - and you will have to mark the spot somehow!

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Share Mrs. Armitage on Wheels Identify each problem Mrs. Armitage solves. Discuss the improvements the children would make to their bikes/scooters, e.g. add a wireless speaker to play music, a TV, a seat for teddy. The energy and mischievous humour of Quentin Blake’s art, as well as its compassionate social awareness, are evident in his award-winning children’s picture book Clown (1995). Read The Train Ride. Identify what the characters see on the journey. List ideas as words or phrases. Show sequencing words ( resources) and model converting the ideas into an oral recount.