Every child attending this performance will receive a FREE copy of Cloud Soup to take home and keep!
Autumn performances 2023 › Ipswich
Kate Wakeling and Elīna Brasliņa performance
Race a comet through outer space, bake an exceptionally weird cake and consider eleven (unexpected) uses for a garden pea. Blending playful poetry performance with live illustration and lots of opportunities to join in, this mischievous and inspiring performance will invite children to conjure up their very own medieval word hoard, meet the inimitable Hamster Man and pull up a chair at the Spy Café.

- Venue:
- New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, IP1 2AS
- Date:
- Thursday 2nd November
- Time:
- 11:00 am
- Duration:
- Approx. 1 hour
- Age range:
- Years 4, 5 and 6
- Tickets:
- £7
Elīna Brasliņa
Elīna Brasliņa is an illustrator and artist from Latvia. She studied printmaking at the Art Academy of Latvia, and discovered her love of book illustration there. She has worked on close to 30 titles, most of them children’s books by Latvian authors. She made her international debut by illustrating Kate Wakeling's collection of poems, Moon Juice (published by The Emma Press). Elīna enjoys playing around with styles and techniques, and even when she works digitally, she almost always incorporates scanned textures to give her work a more hand-drawn feeling. She lives in Riga with her husband, her daughter and their dog Bonnie.
Praise for Moon Juice
Moon Juice, from the Emma Press, illustrated with spiky charm by Elīna Brasliņa, won the 2017 CLiPPA, ranges from dreamy celestial meditation to comet-streaking speed
Watch:
Kate Wakeling and Elina Braslina talk about their book Cloud Soup
Kate Wakeling
Kate Wakeling is a poet who writes for both children and adults. Her debut collection of children’s poetry, Moon Juice (The Emma Press) is illustrated by Elīna Brasliņa, won the 2017 CLiPPA and was nominated for the 2018 CILIP Carnegie Medal. Kate’s second collection for children, Cloud Soup, came out in 2021. Kate studied music at university and often collaborates with musicians, including as writer-in-residence for Aurora Orchestra. She loves writing scripts for musical performances, and her work has featured at the Southbank Centre, the Barbican, Kings Place and on BBC Radio 3.
Praise for Cloud Soup
Both limpidly welcoming and profoundly meaningful, some of these poems, on subjects from weird cakes to good ideas, bodies, dust and Antarctica, will surely stay with their enthralled readers for ever.
Watch:
Kate Wakeling reads one of her poems
Book tickets for an event and receive two free books for your classroom
Free Workshops!
The Children’s Bookshow will allocate four free in-classroom workshops to schools attending this performance with 30 or more children. Book tickets for this event to have a chance of being chosen to receive this fantastic opportunity.
Find out more:
We feel it is so beneficial for our children to have the opportunity to meet authors and to hear them talk about their work. The children themselves are so enthusiastic about reading after these events that we feel they are an invaluable contribution towards our children becoming both skilled readers and lovers of reading.
The details
- Please arrive at the venue at least 20 minutes before the start of the performance, so that you have enough time to find your seats and and use the bathroom. Our start times are strictly governed by the theatres that we work with and by the start and end times of the school day. If you are unavoidably delayed, please get in touch with your Children’s Bookshow contact as soon as possible.
- Depending on the time of the performance, you may want your children to bring a packed lunch. (Please contact the theatre directly to check if there is a suitable space.)
- Parking facilities vary from theatre to theatre; please check the theatre website for details.
- Please contact the theatre directly for risk assessment information.
- Please ensure your children have visited the bathroom before the show starts, or ask them to wait until after the performance ends. A constant stream of children getting up to go to the toilet is very distracting for our performers and other members of the audience.
Still have questions? You can find our FAQs here.
Have any questions? Get in touch

Your contact for this performance is Liz Neville, she will be happy to answer any queries you have:
- liz@thechildrensbookshow.com
- Phone
- 07866 311486