Today I’m losing one of my most valued test audiences as they move on to secondary school. I just wanted to say that having you here to read what I’ve written has been incredibly valuable to me over the past year and a bit.  I started reading you the story because I hoped it might inspire you to do some writing of your own. Maybe with some of you it will. Writing a book, I’m finding, is a long experience which requires lots of patience and belief. When you begin, and for a long time afterwards, you constantly feel that this is too big a task and that you will never get to the end.  Something will get in the way and make you give up.  

When somebody in class said that they’d rather read The Crossing than Michael Morpurgo, it made me feel incredibly honoured.

What I’ve found, and what I hope you can see for yourselves now, is that if you keep plugging away and making time, whatever you want to achieve can be made into reality.  It doesn’t have to be writing.  If you have a dream, whatever it is, you can make it come true with enough desire.

So, good luck all of you. I hope you’ll check in here every now and again and, maybe one day in the not too distant future, you’ll get to read the rest and find out what happens to Paul, Tempe, Ashana and the others.

Have fun, and thank you once again.  I wish you nothing but the very best in all things.

Mr. A