Andy Cope: Spy Dog Roller Coaster, Monday 2nd July, 6 - 7:30pm, Waterstone's Deansgate.
Words and Photographs by Joanne Carrington
It is a grey and rainy evening in Manchester. However,
myself and about 30 other children and parents are dry and warm on the top
floor of Waterstones, eagerly awaiting the start of the Andy Cope: Spy Dog Roller Coaster Event.
Wandering around the room and graciously accepting
the adoration of her eager fans is (a rather muddy) Lara the dog,
affectionately described as: ‘The cutest dog in the world’ by one young girl.
Lara is the star and inspiration behind Andy Cope’s ‘Spy Dog’ series, in which
Lara is a highly trained special agent dog working for the government.
We are introduced to Lara and how she inspired Andy
Cope to write his first Spy Dog book after asking ‘what if?’, when watching
James Bond with Lara by his side. Cope catches the attention of his audience
with humorous anecdotes about Lara and an adorable slideshow of photos of her
as a puppy (she is now 11, nearly 77 in dog years!), which promoted a chorus of
‘awwwwww’ from the audience. He encourages the children to think of what their
own pets could be if we asked ‘what if?’, and soon everyone is talking about
Marvin the girl guinea pig. Could she be a spy guinea pig? No one knows what pets
do when we aren’t watching!
From the start of the event Andy Cope quickly
engages and entertains the audience with games such as ‘Say The Colour Not The
Word’ (Blue, Red,
Yellow...), which is definitely not as easy
as it seems! He then asks us to vote whether Lara is ugly, beautiful, cute or
unusual? As you can imagine, the vote was almost unanimous on Lara being cute
and my hand was definitely the first to go up. The room erupts into giggles as
he tells funny anecdotes about ‘boring Melanie’ from school, and how no one wants
to become the boring one! His message throughout is clear; make the right
choices to be interesting, brilliant and determined and everyone will get the
right things out of life. Reading is fun and much more rewarding than watching
television all day.
After questions from the audience about how long it
takes to write the Spy Dog books, which varies from two weeks to almost a year,
it is time for the children to write their own stories. There is a rush to the
back of the room for everyone to get pens and paper and then the room is
silent. Everyone is busy writing away (and Lara is happily napping on her back,
legs in the air, in the middle of the room).
The under 10s are asked to write a short story
featuring a gorilla and the older children have to write a story with the line:
‘Oh my goodness Mrs Jones, your toenails are melting!’ Ten minutes (and lots of
creativity) later, the stories are done. The results being an array of
imaginative short stories from a clearly inspired and captivated group of
children featuring characters such as Captain Underpants and Marshmallow the
gorilla, to huge explosions capable of melting toenails. Even a Gorilla in
tights! You can’t get much more varied than that.
Overall, Andy and Lara have engaged and entertained
the audience, promoting the idea of the ‘sausage machine of life’—we have to
put good things in to life to get good things out. His talk was certainly
inspirational (especially to a recent graduate) and I am happy to say the
children all seemed suitably inspired as they left with arms piled of signed
Spy Dog books, ready to go home to perform random acts of kindness that Cope
has encouraged.
Meanwhile, Lara has woken up just in time to
appreciate some more affection from her adoring fans (and I am definitely one
of them).
Joanne has just graduated from MMU with a degree in English with Social History
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