West Thornton Primary enjoy story time with real life princess – Inside Croydon

Pupils at West Thornton Primary who had prepared for a regular class to read the usual fairy tales and dungeons and dragons tales, all designed to delight and ignite their imaginations, got the surprise of their young lives this week when they got a visit from a real-life princess.

Practicing their A-Bea-Cs: Princess Beatrice, the King’s granddaughter, helped a Year 1 story class at West Thornton Primary this week. Image: Aaron Chown/PAWire

Princess Beatrice helped stage a very special story with Year 1 pupils thanks to the Oscar-winning book.

The visit celebrated the recent launch of Oscar’s Book Club, where Amazon donates this year’s selected books to schools and nurseries across the country through the company’s reading volunteer network.

This team of volunteers will also support on the ground with group reading sessions to inspire young children through the magic of reading.

Beatrice, ninth in line to the throne and granddaughter of the King, is the Royal Patron of the Oscar Book Award.

At West Thornton, she read the winning book in 2024, When dinosaurs walked the Earth by Sean Taylor and Zehra Hicks, before sitting down with the class to look at the other selected books and find out a little more about the students’ own reading habits.

Bookworms: staff and pupils at West Thornton gather with Princess Beatrice after their Academy Awards session

Jonathan Owen, headteacher at West Thornton, said: “There is so much to be learned from picture books and we ensure our children are exposed to a wide range of stories from the start of their school journey.

“One of our school’s priorities is to ensure that competent reading skills and a love of reading underpin all learning in our curriculum. We carefully select texts that faithfully represent our diverse community and serve to expand children’s imaginations.

“The diversity of subjects covered in children’s books is greater than ever, and this year’s nominees for the Academy Award for Book Awards were no exception. We loved reading them together and it was an absolute delight to have HRH Princess Beatrice visit and read this year’s winning book – it’s sure to be a storytime to remember!”

When dinosaurs walked the Earth (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books) topped the shortlist of five to take home the £10,000 prize. The book is a fun story about the daring journey of a little dinosaur named Smallasaurus, who just wants to enjoy her plant-based diet in peace, but goes on a big adventure along the way.

“This witty and vibrant children’s book brings prehistoric times into the present day, with dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes,” according to Amazon.

The award, now in its 11th year, was established by James Ashton and Viveka Alvestrand – named in memory of their son Oscar, who was three-and-a-half years old when he died from an undiagnosed heart condition.

For more information about the Oscar’s Book Prize, visit www.oscarsbookprize.co.uk and to see all of this year’s shortlisted books, along with a wide selection of children’s books on Amazon, go to amazon.co.uk/oscarsbookprize.

advertisement

FREE ADVERTISEMENTS: Paid subscribers to Inside Croydon qualify for a free advert for their business, residents’ association or community group, just one of the benefits of being part of our online community. For more information on becoming an iC subscriber, click here for our Patreon page

Paid Ads: To promote your services or products to the site’s nearly 10,000 weekday visitors, which is featured on Google News Showcase and followed by 16,000 on Twitter/X, email us at inside.croydon @btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is based in the borough, please consider paying for it. Sign up today: Click here for more details

• If you have a story about life in or around Croydon, or want to advertise your residents’ association or business, or have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@ btinternet.com

• As featured on Google News Showcase

• ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s most rotten boroughs for the seventh consecutive year in the annual summary of civic advertising in Private magazine