Hi there! I love talking to children about my work and encouraging them to make up their own stories. I’ve had a lot of experience as a writer having been writing children’s books since the mid-eighties. I’ve written for many children’s comics too including Sindy, Barbie, Winnie the Pooh and Thomas the Tank Engine. Some of my short stories were featured on Playdays BBC and some of my poems on the BBC One Potato, Two Potato website. I write for all ages and in all genres. Story books, picture books, plays, joke books, I’ve written them all! I’m willing to have a go at anything but am most comfortable writing books for nine year olds and under. However, I started my writing career writing photo stories for Jackie magazine and am currently revising a teenage novel, which I received an Arts Council Grant to write, so I’m pretty flexible.
I am a member of Scope’s ‘In The Picture’ campaign and am keen to promote ethnic diversity and disability in children’s literature as I feel it is important for children’s self-esteem to see characters like themselves portrayed in the books they read.
School Visits
Reception children: - Story Telling - I read out one of my picture books and talk about it to the children, asking questions and discussing alternative endings with them. I also run a class story building session, where I encourage the children to make up a story as a group, about a couple of toys. This is usually very noisy but great fun.
KS1: Story boxes - I use a box of small toys to encourage the children to write stories. First, we practise as a group, I pull one toy out of the box and ‘brain-storm’ the story around the classroom, asking the children what they think the toy’s name is, where it lives, etc, bringing out another couple of toys so they can build up the story. Once we’ve worked out a story together I then ask the children to choose a toy out of the box and write their own story.
KS2: Story cards - I bring along some story cards. One card contains a list of characters, another a list of different homes (house/flat/caravan etc), another a setting, another a story opening and another a story problem, etc. Each child builds up a story by choosing something from each box. Once again we will practise by building up a story as a group first.
Other activities I have done with children are:
Who lives there? - I stick a picture of some sort of dwelling - spooky looking house, castle, igloo, anything - on the wall and ask the children to build a story around the picture. First we think about who lives there, what the character is like, what the weather is like, what other characters live nearby, then build up the story, giving the character a problem and resolving it. I find this works well with both KS1 and 2.
Story boarding - This works best for KS2 but I can adapt it for younger children. I talk about writing for magazines, in particular writing picture and comic strips. Then I show the children how to make a short comic strip using a storyboard.
I prefer to work with reception, KS1 and KS2 children but would be interested in supporting children with transition from primary to secondary school. I usually offer at least four sessions a day and prefer to work with groups of thirty maximum. However, I’m happy to talk to larger groups about my books, a writer’s life, writing in general and to answer questions.
Feedback
‘Karen visited us during the week of World Book Day.
She spent considerable time and thought in liaising with us beforehand. She differentiated her activities well for the YR-Y6 age range, and managed to make her activities relevant to her work eg. storyboarding with Y5&6, relating it to her picture strip fiction writing. With younger children she demonstrated how she builds a story and enabled them to have a go too. She related well to the children, enabling them to contribute ideas with confidence. The children felt she had given them some real pointers in improving their storywriting skills. We would invite her back to school’.
Headteacher
St Mellion School, Cornwall

Book list
I’ve written over one hundred children’s books and have been writing so long many of them are now out of print. Here are some of my latest titles:
The Amy Carter Mysteries ( Podcast-linked mysteries):
Book 1: Dognapped
Book 2: Sabotage
Book 3: Smugglers - out in August
And Me! (Picture book)
Plays for Primary Schools