Clare is a trained primary school teacher with over fifteen years’ experience working with children and families. On this page you will find details of her school, festival, library and bookshop events. If you are interested in a visit, great! Please use the contact form below. 

SCHOOL VISITS: Clare is passionate about children’s literacy and loves using her teaching experience to run events in schools. Her books link well with the following themes; empathy, space, pirates, biscuits, families, animal adaptations, migration, well-being, and traditional tales. They can be tailored to EYFS, KS1 and KS2 children. 

Please take a look at the price guide and get in contact for more information: price guide

**NOW OFFERING IN PERSON, VIRTUAL AND PRE-RECORDED EVENTS**

You can find more information about organising an author visit here:

• Society of Authors Guide for Schools Organising an Author Visit 
• World Book Day website: Your guide to organising an author or illustrator visit
• BookTrust article: How to arrange an author or illustrator visit
• Author-illustrator Sarah McIntyre’s 25 tips for hosting an awesome author visit

LIBRARY VISITS: Clare is experienced running library events for children and their families. 

FESTIVALS: Clare loves all opportunities to work with young readers and their families. Her workshops and craft activities are always fun and interactive.

BOOK SIGNINGS: Clare is available for book signings, storytelling and crafts.

FEEDBACK and COMMENDATIONS: 

“I really enjoyed the workshop day with Clare – I really appreciated Clare’s approachable manner, she put us at ease and I felt welcome, which was great as I was quite nervous beforehand!” (Bristol PB workshop with SCWBI)

“The critique Clare gave was constructive and really encouraging. And it was so helpful learning more about the technique and craft of structuring a picture book. Rather than having loads of ideas and characters milling about and wandering up blind alleys I feel I’ve got some practical tools to help me see what I can do with some of them now!” (Bristol PB workshop with SCWBI)

“On behalf of all the children, families and staff at TSJ we want to thank you for visiting last week. The children have been inspired by your visit and gained valuable expertise from you and learnt so much about what it really means to be an author. They loved hearing your book and have been reading it over and over again. The boys in Year 6 were so very proud of their writing and shared it first thing with their teacher the following day who was blown away. 

Thank you again, it was a wonderful afternoon, Laura.” (St John’s Primary School, Totnes)

“We had the great pleasure of hosting Clare at our dual use library at the Estover Tor Bridge campus when we celebrated Empathy Day in June 2019. Clare’s lovely, funny picture book “How Rude” was the perfect launch pad to reflect on feelings and friendship in a humorous context with very young children from the Nursery and Reception classes. They were completely engaged by Clare and the book’s message around honesty and rudeness and absolutely loved participating in the role play. As an experienced teacher Clare was able to pitch her session just right for her audience and kept everything flowing beautifully throughout, I cannot recommend her highly enough!” (Julia Hale,School Libraries Advisor, Plymouth)

“Having worked with Clare now on a number of events, I can say that it is always a pleasure to invite her to Newton Abbot Library.  Clare’s story events are well-organised and well-attended, and we are always confident that the families attending will leave with smiling faces. We know she has the same effect on audiences at other Devon and Torbay libraries also run by Libraries Unlimited. Her creativity and upbeat personality has built her a loyal following among our customers, and we look forward to welcoming her back to the library in the future.” Emma Andrews, Newton Abbot Library, Customer Service Assistant, Libraries Unlimited.

“Local author Clare Helen Welsh has been a real inspiration to us all today! Key Stage One had lots of fun designing characters based on her books and Key Stage Two found out about the journey that she had from her initial ideas to becoming a published author. We even had a go at testing how aerodynamic a range of biscuits are! :)”

“Super! The children enjoyed the activities and they fitted well with the introduction to story writing. Perfect for reception children. Their ideas can be further developed back in the classroom. Hopefully some children will continue their thinking and writing.”

“All children were totally engaged and enthralled throughout the workshop. Clare was fantastic with the children, bringing plenty of props to excite and provoke creativity from the group. The children were well guided and fully involved throughout the session.”

“Local author Clare Helen Welsh has been a real inspiration to us all today! Key Stage One had lots of fun designing characters based on her books and Key Stage Two found out about the journey that she had from her initial ideas to becoming a published author. We even had a go at testing how aerodynamic a range of biscuits are!”

“The workshop was amazing! The children were engaged from start to finish. Such a great way to get such young children to believe in themselves as writers! The children haven’t stopped talking about where they are going to travel in their rocket!”