Meet Hope and Social, The Chickens.

This Friday Hope and Social are going to Carr Green School in Brighouse to give out 48 of the 1 million books being given out free as part of World Book Night and to meet, wait for it………….. Hope and Social, the chickens!

Forget Jamie’s Dream School, Carr Green is the school of your dreams.

We have huge admiration for Lesely The Head Mistress of the Carr Green School. She has an infectious and relentless enthusiasm for doing unusual, creative and fun things with her pupils. What really inspired us was hearing first hand about the positive impacts her events have had on building individual children’s confidence, enriching their learning and giving them experiences that they will remember for a life time.

In Lesley’s own words some of the things they do;

“We try really hard to be creative – we have whole class trumpet lessons with over 100 kids playing a week – certainly wakes us up on a Monday!  We had a whole school sledging competition last Jan, with over 350 kids sledging, we bring in artists and visitors whenever we can and have just developed a fantastic outdoor classroom including allotments and are planning to run a ‘Village Show’ next year with giant marrows, maypole dancing, hopefully brass band etc (don’t suppose you fancy playing?)”

Hosting their own World Cup, Carr Greens Got Talent, making spoof videos of “Is This The Way To Amarillo”, naming chickens after a band from Leeds…. and so the list of inspiring ideas goes on!

On Friday afternoon we are going to teach the kids some Hope and Social songs, meet Hope and Social the chickens, do a mass book swap, give out 50 copies of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night Time, and then, with the help of the kids and 250  kazoos, we will do a gig for a group of  wide eyed parents in a last thing on Friday afternoon assembly.

Needless to say, we are very, very, very, eggcited about the whole thing.

If you want to get involved in World Book Night, and why wouldn’t you, we urge you to support you local book shop by throwing yourself head long into this lovely idea that Nicola Morgan suggested on her blog:

“One day between now and next Saturday (5 March), let’s each of us buy a book, preferably from an actual bookshop, or direct from a publisher. Any book.”

“Write inside it: ‘Given in the spirit of World Book Night, March 5th 2011 and bought from [insert name of shop] – please enjoy and tell people about it.’ And give it to someone. Anyone. A friend or stranger, a library or school or doctor’s surgery or anything. Then go home, and enjoy whatever you’re reading yourself.”

Be sure to let us know which book you choose below, or feel free to buy us one! :)