Performances
The Children’s Bookshow brings some of the best children’s authors from the UK and abroad to local theatre venues and gives teachers and school children the opportunity to hear world-class artists talk about their work.
Spring Performances 2025
Join us for our Spring programme to celebrate the joy of reading. See below for more details and to book your place!
Autumn performances 2025
We have an absolutely awesome line-up this year! See below for a sneak peak of our autumn theatre performances. Booking opens on 1st May after our launch event.
- Katherine Rundell performance, Blackpool, Friday 19th September
- Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson performance, Wolverhampton, Monday 29th September
- Michael Rosen performance, Coventry, Monday 6th October
- Matt Goodfellow performance, Bristol, Wednesday 8th October
- Owen Sheers and Helen Stephens performance, Hull, Tuesday 14th October
- Rebecca Cobb and Mariesa Dulak performance, Milton Keynes, Monday 20th October
- Catherine Rayner performance, Newcastle, Monday 3rd November
- Yasmeen Ismail performance, Portsmouth, Wednesday 5th November
- Catherine Johnson performance, Ipswich, Thursday 6th November
- Alom Shaha and Sarthak Sinha performance, Exeter, Tuesday 11th November
- SF Said performance, Peterborough, Monday 17th November
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More about our performances
We give children the chance to experience an inspiring ‘live’ encounter with an artist. Our authors and illustrators talk about their working lives, show children the paint brushes and notebooks that they use, the tools and tricks of their trade, and in doing this, they offer children a real insight into what it means to work creatively. Feedback from children show their strong appetite for new and challenging experiences, their feeling of personal connection to the writers whom they have met, and their sense of being inspired by contact with creative artists. We want children to feel that great literature and art is for them; that they can engage with it, enjoy it and practise it.
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Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development… Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Reading also feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious minds.
Want to help more children attend events like these in the future?