Ed Boxall

Creative author-illustrator blending music, storytelling, poetry, and visuals in dynamic children's workshops.

edboxall.co.uk

Booking enquiry

Available for

Workshop, Talk, Reading, Interview, Commission a book

Audiences

Age 1 to 3, Age 3 to 5, Age 5 to 7, Age 7 to 11

Genres

Fiction, Picture book, Poetry

Book types

Fiction 5-9, Picture book, Poetry

Details

I'm Ed Boxall—an artist, writer, performer, and educator based in Hastings. My own stories, such as Francis The Scaredy Cat and Carried Away with the Carnival, have captured the imaginations of children for many years. Francis The Scaredy Cat was published by Walker Books and featured on the BBC’s Tikkabilla. My poetry collection, Me and My Alien Friend, was praised for its empathy and understanding of children and was a recommended book for the 2019 Summer Reading Challenge.

In addition to my own books, I have illustrated stories for a range of children’s authors, such as Brian Moses, Roger Stevens, James Carter, and Vivian French. My work has been published by a variety of leading publishers, including Bloomsbury, Macmillan, Walker Books, Troika, Otter-Barry, and others. I also publish my own titles through my own 'Pearbox Press'.

Alongside writing and illustrating, I have performed my stories to thousands of children in schools, libraries, and at festivals. I also run creative workshops that blend storytelling, music, poetry, and art, making each visit a lively and memorable experience.

In 2022, I completed storytelling training with The School of Storytelling at Emerson College, which has added a dynamic storytelling to my repertoire. I love sharing my own stories as well as a wide range of tales from different cultures, weaving together music and art to spark imaginations. If you’d like me to visit your school or library, please get in touch below.

To give a sense of the range I offer, here are just a couple of examples:

Finding Your Voice Workshop (Poetry Workshop for Key Stage 2):

Inspired by the journey to ‘finding your voice’ in The Castle of Um, this workshop invites children to explore both spoken and written expression—experimenting with tone, mood, and meaning through poetry, movement, spoken word games, and performance. I draw on children’s natural ways of expressing themselves through pretend play, using accessible poem scaffolds and playful prompts to give voices to the voiceless—mountains, seas, forests, and clouds. Through this creative play, children discover their own unique voice and learn how ‘voice’ in poetry can create feeling, atmosphere, and meaning.

What If My Nose Could Fly? (Nonsense ‘Fun with Phonics’ Poetry Workshop for Key Stage 1):

This lively and inclusive session takes inspiration from The Castle of Um and my story Carried Away with the Carnival. It’s full of music, rhythm, movement, and active participation. Children invent nonsense carnival creatures and characters through drawing and collage, and create new words to describe them, exploring the playful side of language and sound. I provide large print phonic fragments for children to build words and create their own picture-poems, supporting the use of ‘alien words’ in the KS1 curriculum. This workshop can be adapted for KS2, staff training, and is always accessible for SEN groups—because you’re never too old for a bit of nonsense!

Books by Ed Boxall

I have written books such as Francis The Scaredy Cat—published by Walker Books and featured on the BBC’s Tikkabilla—and Me and My Alien Friend, which was a hit with the Summer Reading Challenge and praised for its empathy and imagination. I love crafting lively, heartfelt stories that spark curiosity, laughter, and creativity in children. In recent years I have published unique titles such as The Castle of Um and Carried Away with The Carnival through my own Pearbox Press.

9781838226879

On author's website

Umpkin

Once there was a garden on a high clifftop by the sea. In the garden there lived a little mouse called Umpkin. Umpkin lived by a pumpkin, with her mum and dad. The big pumpkin sheltered them when the wild wind blew. But one day there was a terrible storm that made a messy muddle of everything. After the storm Umpkin found herself on the pumpkin. Both Umpkin, and the pumkin were far out at sea… Join Umpkin on a marvellous adventure as she finds her way home, seeing wonders, facing dangers, and making friends.

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Waterstones

ISBN 9781838226862

On author's website

The Castle of Um

By day, Lily builds a castle out of cardboard. By night, she builds a castle from dreams. The Castle of Um is an uplifting blend of prose, poetry and illustrations. Ed explores Lily’s daytime school life through prose—and her dreams through poetry. Both worlds are illustrated with Ed’s own drawings. As well as being an exciting story, this book is a powerful tool for helping children navigate bullying with empathy, honesty, creativity, and humour

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Waterstones

978-1838226831

On author's website

Carried Away with the Carnival

Sharing the excitement of a little boy as he attends his first carnival with his grandad, Carried Away with the Carnival captures the imagination of its early years readers with its vivid tale of Chinese dragons, Brazilian dancers, Celtic mermaids and more.

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Waterstones

978-1-909991-82-8

On author's website

Me and My Alien Friend

Me and My Alien Friend is full of all sorts of friends: best friends, changing friends, absent friends, animal friends, imaginary friends and even a friend who’s a ‘Thing on a Springy String’. In the poems, friends adventure together: discovering, exploring and sharing life’s happy hills and lonely dark hollows. The ‘Alien Friend’ poem returns like a chorus throughout the book: a boy sits on the moon with his 38-toed alien friend, looking at our world from a peaceful distance, observing, thinking, dreaming. In poems and drawings, friendship is gently celebrated as a universal experience that can cross every divide.

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Waterstones

978-1-8382268-4-8

On author's website

We the Wild Ones

We The Wild Ones is a beautiful collection of poems, stories and art that take the reader on a journey into the wild. Your friends on this journey are an adventurous barefooted child and his equally adventurous cat. The unconventional mix of stories, poems and art bring an enchanting version of the British countryside to life. Here we find wolves and bears hidden behind the leaves of the high branches of an oak tree . Here we walk along evening paths with The Crow-man: Jamboranja Jamboram. Here we dream ourselves to the far lands of Unsomewhere. And here, with the wild ones, we always find healing magic and another bright tomorrow. These daydreams of the wild are as much for adults as children. We The Wild Ones is for everyone.

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Waterstones

Photos and videos

Keywords

BULLYING CHILDRENS EARLY YEARS EARLY YEARS FOLKTALES ILLUSTRATION ILLUSTRATOR INCLUSIVE KEY STAGE ONE KEY STAGE TWO MAGIC MULTICULTURAL MUSICAL MYTH POETRY SEN SEND STORYTELLING WELLBEING