A BURY-born children's author visited his old primary school to encourage pupils to cultivate their creative talents.

Simon Cherry, aged 58, spoke to pupils at Greenmount Primary School last Monday, 49 years after he last attended the school.

In 1968, he moved to Cheshire with his family, and attended Manchester Grammar School before reading English at Cambridge University.

Mr Cherry, who now lives in Surrey with his wife and two 15-year-old sons, then spent twenty years working as a producer and director in the ITV arts department.

He has since turned his hand to writing children’s books, with his first attempt, Eddy Stone and the Epic Holiday Mash-Up, receiving a nomination for the Laugh Out Loud Awards, also known as the Lollies, which recognises the funniest books of the year.

He describes his books as being ‘funny adventures’ aimed at readers aged 7-11.

He added: “I thought it would be a great opportunity to go back to my old school and see how it has changed since I left in 1968.

“When I was there we were still in the old nineteenth century stone building, which is now used as a community centre. I remember writing with chalk on slates in some lessons.

“I’m happy to say the new school building has much better facilities than we had all those years ago!”

As part of his visit, the author ran workshops with pupils in years five and six.

Based on his first book, which follows the character Eddy Stone, who sails off on a treasure hunt with a pirate during his epic holiday, Mr Cherry talked to the children about real pirates and asked the children to suggest what Eddy would need for the voyage, while kitting out class teacher Ben Coop with the clothes and props they named.

Year six then took part in a story writing session in which they were asked to think of a wish they would like to have granted, and then work out how it could go wrong.

That idea is the beginning of the plot of Simon’s third book, Eddy Stone and the Mean Genie’s Curse, which he says will be published next spring.

Of his visit, Mr Cherry said: “I really enjoy the way you can spark children’s imaginations in an exercise like this. They came up with some brilliant ideas.

“Teachers are under huge pressure these days in literacy classes to concentrate on grammar, punctuation and spelling, so it’s great to be allowed to put the rule book to one side for an hour and work on the creative side of writing.”

Mr Cherry has since published a second book, Alien Cat Mash-Up, in which Eddy rescues a wet cat from his garden, not knowing that it is actually an alien is disguise with evil plans for the world.