Ella on the Outside was published in 2018. One of its big themes is friendship, and Ella takes a while to discover the right friend.
As I visited schools to introduce the story, I found myself reflecting on what a real friend is and talked a lot to children about it.
Their ideas were amazing.
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 I asked each child in my workshops to complete this statement: A Real Friend is like………because…………

I asked children to think of an image- an object, a colour, something everyday, something extraordinary!
​I now have a fantastic collection. These answers are never altered; they are in the children’s own words.
The slate was my Grandad’s, used to learn to read and write.
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Here are some of my favourites:

If you would like to send me a Real Friend of your own, you can use the contact page on this website. I’m always keen to collect more!

You can see all the tweets in the project so far here.