Mr Jones, equipped with a ukelele, a keyboard, and his puppet cast, put on a musical adaptation of his fairytale spin-off book series ‘Fairy Tales for the Fearless’ to a sold-out audience, singing through his stories such as ‘CinderGorilla’ and ‘Rabunzel’.
‘I’ve found that music has great impact and immediacy,’ he said.
‘When I go into schools, some of the children may not really be interested in reading or stories, but if I’m performing to music, they’ll instantly get into it. You get them interested, so then it’s breaking down those barriers to reading.’
Mr Jones has long harboured a passion for both storytelling and reading, originally beginning his foray into writing children’s books after reading the Harry Potter series as an adult and later turning his own works into mini musicals.
‘They’re not all different things. The way I see it, all creative, all artistic endeavours are mixed,’ he said.
As such, Mr Jones has long been putting his stories to music, finding that musical adaptations can expand upon and even improve the story as written on the page.
‘What’s interesting to me is seeing parts of the stories come alive that aren’t in the books,’ he said, adding that he has used the work of illustrator Loretta Schauer, who illustrated the Fairy Tales for the Fearless series, as further inspiration for his musicals, letting her artistic interpretation of his stories feed into the final production.
Mr Jones’ performance at the library forms part of a tour he is putting on for the National Year of Reading. His next stop is Jersey.
‘As well as being a top children’s author, he’s also a wonderful performer, and his events are always enormous fun,’ said the library’s head of children and young people’s services Jodie Hearn.
‘The Summer Reading Challenge theme, Read to the Beat, is all about celebrating the connection between stories and songs, so Gareth’s musical storytelling is the perfect way to kick off our summer programme of events.’
You need to be logged in to comment.