Home – James Campbell

James Campbell
children’s author
storyteller
comedian and
lollipop lady
He performs his comedy for children shows all over the place and visits many many primary schools with his unique blend of storytelling, talking about writing and being properly hilarious. He has four books out at the moment published by Hodder and two more coming in 2018 published by Bloomsbury. James lives in Suffolk with his wife, many children, dog and chickens. He is six foot and one inch tall and enjoys writing about himself in the third person.

About Me Book Me

James Campbell
children’s author
storyteller
comedian and
lollipop lady

He performs his comedy for children shows all over the place and visits many many primary schools with his unique blend of storytelling, talking about writing and being properly hilarious. He has four books out at the moment published by Hodder and two more coming in 2018 published by Bloomsbury. James lives in Suffolk with his wife, many children, dog and chickens. He is six foot and one inch tall and enjoys writing about himself in the third person.

James Campbell

James decided that he was a writer when he was seven. Before that he wanted to be a duck. As a writer, he loved the way that the stories he read took his brain to other places. Most children would think to themselves, “Hmmm. I shall read more stories.” But James didn’t think that. James thought,

“Hmmm. I need to be in charge of this. I shall write my own stories.”

James began writing the sorts of stories that he was reading, usually magical stories with portals. Then he became obsessed with Star Wars until he was about ten when he discovered war stories and other things that were too old for him. As a teenager he did the usual teenage things but wrote terrible poems while he was doing them and then at the age of 19 he won a playwriting festival and set about being a proper writer.

James did some voluntary work in an infant school and began making up stories for the children he was working with. One day, one of the teachers asked him if he’d like to visit her husband’s school and asked how much money he would charge…

Since then, James has visited nearly two and a half thousand schools.

At weekends and in holiday times James has performed his Comedy 4 Kids show all over the world. Currently in the middle of a rebrand, his current show is calling itself “The Funny Thing About..” and is a mixture of comedy for children and talking about his new hilarious book which comes out in 2018. You can find dates on the dates page…

Dates

The Boyface Books

Boyface is a boy like most boys but more so. And different. He is very lucky in that his family are a family of stripemongers – people skilled in the arts of taking stripes off things and putting them on other things.

Mainly they take zebras – which are very cheap if you know where to get them – put them in their magical machine, remove the stripes and then sell them as ponies – which are very expensive.

They keep the stripes in a special bucket and so you might go to their shop with your hamster and say, “This is my hamster. It’s really boring. Could you make it more interesting please?”

And they would put zebra stripes on your hamster. And so you’d have a zebra hamster!

Somehow James has managed to write an entire series of books about these people. At the moment there are four Boyface books. They were written in this order:

1) Boyface and the Quantum Chromatic Disruption Machine

2) Boyface and the Tartan Badger

3) Boyface and the Uncertain Ponies

4) Boyface and the Power of Three And A Bit

But you don’t HAVE to read them in this order. You can read them in any order you like really. They probably won’t make much less sense than if you read them in the right order.

I wouldn’t read the last one first though. That would be weird.

Boy Face and the Uncertain Ponies by James Campbell — **Boy Face and the Uncertain Ponies**
by James Campbell

Boy Face and the Tartan Badger by James Campbell — **Boy Face and the Tartan Badger**
by James Campbell

Boy Face and the Quantum Chromatic Disruption Machine by James Campbell — **Boy Face and the Quantum Chromatic Disruption Machine**
by James Campbell

Boyface and the Power of Three and a Bit by James Campbell — **Boyface and the Power of Three and a Bit**
by James Campbell

New Books Coming Soon

In 2018 Bloomsbury are publishing two of James’ new books…

“Write You Own Book” does what the title suggests. It’s half notebook, half book about writing stories. The idea is that as you read it, if you follow all the instructions and suggestions, by the time you’ve got to the end you’ll have written your own story. The really exciting thing about this book though is that all the author’s bits are written on flaps and removable pages so when you’ve finished writing you can tear out James’ bits, flip the cover round and make your own book cover and behold! You will have your own proper book, written by you that you can put on the shelf with all your other books.

James’ second book doesn’t have a title yet but it’s going to be a bit like his comedy show but in a book. It will be hilarious and be about how funny pets are. It’s not like any other book. You can read it in many different ways, choosing your own way through various tangents of nonsense and comedy.

You can buy James’ Boyface books on Amazon.

The other books will be available in March 2018 in theory but we will post on this website as soon as you can pre-order them.

View All Books

School Visits and Performances

Since 1996 James has visited over two and a half thousand schools around the world.

These days he usually spends two days a week in schools, mainly in Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. He can however, be tempted further afield if you ask nicely.

Most of the schools he visits are primary schools but he is also very experienced at working with the bottom half of secondary schools.

“I’m told that I am not like other author visits. I do talk about my books, of course, but only in such a way that I can inspire the children in their own writing. For me, the most important thing is to show the children that they can do it too. I was brought up in a council house in Cambridgeshire. I went to a normal school and no one else in my family was a writer. If I can become a successful, published author then any of your children can. In fact, any of your children can do anything. I mix this kind of motivational speaking with discussion of techniques that they can actually apply to their school work. This combination and making sure that everyone is laughing while they learn is what, I think, makes my work so well received.” James Campbell

Thank you so much for your visit. The staff and the pupils were buzzing after you left. They really enjoyed your visit and kept asking me if you were coming back!

Beth AldousCaister-on-Sea Primary, Norfolk

The children loved your visit on Friday and had a fantastic day – it was a great end to our book week. (March 2017)

Sally O’DellMorley Primary School, Norfolk

You were brilliant today! The kids had an excellent time and really loved hearing you talk. It was a pleasure to be in the hall and watch them enjoy themselves so much. March 2017

Steve WrightWinslow Primary School, Bucks

Mine have come in this morning with pink shiny folders of stories, bits of paper torn
from other paper, picture stories, typed stories, front covers, plans,
blurbs… they want to enter the 500 words competition on Radio 2 and we
are spending really quite a lot of time at the end of the day with them
reading all their many many things out. Their imagination is flowing! (Feb 2016)

Walsham-le-Willows

Sincere thanks for such a positive, productive experience for our students and staff on Friday. Your genuine humour and manner with whole year groups and smaller classes kept everyone engaged. Your books have been very popular in the Library and we can already see how much of a positive impact the day had.

East Bergholt High School

“THANK YOU so much for your visit yesterday – we absolutely loved having you here and hope to do so again in the future. The pupils were incredibly positive about your visit and the staff also enjoyed your presentations. THANKS again!”

Gilbert Inglefield Acadmey, Bedfordshire

I just wanted to write you a quick email to say thank you for yesterday. You were such a breath of fresh air – funny, inspiring and utterly engaging. The children have been demolishing Boyface (I know several who had finished reading it by the end of the day), and they have not stopped talking about how much you made them laugh. My Year 5 pupils log their reading online and have a book-related blog that they can post comments to. This morning, their comments were all about you, including: wasn’t yesterday great. literally every few sentences he said there was a joke in one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Comments from all the teachers who met you have been similarly favourable, with many saying that you were the most engaging and vibrant visiting author/speaker that they had seen. So, thanks once again, and I very much hope that you will come back and visit us again at Blackheath Prep in the near future

Nikki DevonBlackheath Prep

Our team delivers an undergraduate module which supports first year students to go into schools and deliver their own sessions, improving their confidence, experience and employability. We invited James to deliver a session as part of our Cultural Careers Conference so that our students could see best practice in action. James delivered his creative writing session to a class of local primary school children where he went through various stages to help them get down on paper their creative ideas. The children, class teachers, our students, and other guest speakers from the conference were all wowed with James’s session. When I took a sneak peek around the room, every single person was wide eyed and smiling or laughing. Everyone was entertained and inspired, but more than that – they were given the tools they needed to set about creating their very own pieces of writing. In the short time we gave him, James somehow supported every single child in the room and showed them their ideas were exciting and valuable. They each went away proudly with the beginnings of their own individual stories. It seemed to be one of those sessions that you would remember forever. We’ve since been delighted to be able to incorporate James’ sessions into our Arts Education Program. Unsurprisingly, all of the schools we’ve worked with have given highly positive praise. I’d like to thank James for enhancing our program and we look forward to working with him again next year! University of Essex.

Kate BeckwithUniversity of Essex

Thanks so much for your visit – the children really enjoyed it and I know the adults were really inspired too. There have been reports from a few parents of children quacking for most of yesterday evening, so they certainly took some things on board!!

Winhills Primary SchoolCambridgeshire

We have had an unprecedented response from parents regarding your visit. Apparently many of them were still ‘buzzing’ when they went home! You certainly made a huge impact!
Thank you so much for coming to see us.

Deborah RoomeOxford House Prep, Colchester

Thank you- the children were still talking about Boyface in cooking club at the end of the day! One year 1 class were so excited after the assembly, the teacher sent her support assistant running up the corridor to claim your book and they made stripe making machines for the rest of the morning. The power of story!

Lyndsey AllsoppSt Edmundsbury Primary, Bury St Edmunds

Thank you so much for visiting our school on Wednesday. The children thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and I have had many teachers come and find me since to let me know how great they thought it was!

I have also had quite a lot of children ask me on the corridor when you’ll be here next so I’m sure we can work together again in the future.

One of my NQT’s came to find me this morning to show me a book a pupil had gone away and created on Wednesday evening about his dreams to be a wrestler as he had been inspired by your writing. She was thrilled as he is usually a very reluctant writer but he had written pages and pages and even included a front cover and a blurb!

St Anthonys RC Primary SchoolManchester

Book James for Your School

Stand Up for Kids

James’ show is currently called “The Funny Thing About…” and is a mixture of stand-up, storytelling and talking about the book he is written – which isabout pets.

Here are the dates booked in the diary at the moment:

View All My Tour Dates