New York Times Best-Selling Author Visits Sunderland School

90 children from Northern Saints school in Sunderland will welcome author and comic creator Stephan Pastis on Tuesday 19 May as part of Seven Stories – National Centre for Children’s Books’ Authors into Schools Programme.

The pupils, aged 8 – 11, will meet Stephan Pastis and celebrate the next installment of his hilarious, best-selling series Timmy Failure. Stephan will bring the classroom alive with a presentation about his comical character and even do some live drawing. Stephan will discuss how he gets his ideas and give the class the chance to find out first-hand how a professional author works.

Calum Rowland, Yr 6 Teacher at Northern Saints Primary School said, “I am very much looking forward to the Timmy Failure event and the positive impact it will have on our children here at Northern Saints. I hope Stephan's visit will inspire and encourage the children to read for pleasure more often.”

Stephan Pastis is the creator of the Book Trust Best Bok Award winning Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made and its first sequels, Timmy Failure: Now Look What You’ve Done and Timmy Failure: We Meet Again, as well as Pearls Before Swine, an acclaimed comic strip that appears in more than seven hundred newspapers worldwide including UK editions of Metro. Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made was named Best Story Book at The Booktrust Nest Book Awards in 2014. Stephan lives in northern California, USA.

Stephan Pastis said, “I love coming to the UK to meet all of Timmy’s British fans – and this is my first time in the North East so I’m especially excited to be working with Seven Stories for the day.”

Timmy Failure is the clueless, comically self-confident CEO of the best detective agency in the town, or perhaps the nation. Add his impressively lazy business partner, a very large polar bear named Total, Throw in the Failuremobile – Timmy’s mom’s Segway – and what you have is Timmy Failure, Inc., a global enterprise destined to make Timmy so rich that his mother won’t have to stress out about the bills any more.

“…A fabulously fun read and the line drawings are a treat. It’s original and quirky with real heart.” Philip Ardagh, The Guardian.

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