Good Morning! Quite often, when you write a blog, you get invited to many different events – some that are of great interest and some that have a mild appeal. When I got the email inviting us to go along to McDonalds at Bloomfield Shopping Centre I was genuinely very excited! Growing up Roald Dahl was my favourite author, I read all of his books and loved getting a new one to add to my collection. J and I have read a couple of his books together at bedtime and just recently J has managed to read The Twits by himself.

I’m sure many of you are aware of the latest ‘free gift’ in the ever popular Happy Meal – a little Roald Dahl book. I had been planning to take our 3 to McDonalds over half term to start our collection, so was delighted to get a chance to hear more of the story behind the venture and get a little sneaky peek at what all is involved.

So, on Saturday morning past, myself and J set off to Bangor. We decided to make it into a little mummy / son date! And, we really had a very different and very fun morning. Young at Art provided an extra ordinary storytelling of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, as a young girl I loved Matilda and was not at all surprised to hear that it is the most read book in Belfast. J loved listening to ‘Granny’ and Emily read an extract from this wonderful book!

Over the next 6 weeks, an incredible 14 MILLION books – which have extracts from Roald Dahl’s most popular books – will be distributed in McDonald’s Happy Meals. For me, this is one of the best McDonald collaborations ever! I love the fact that it will make the most wonderful, extraordinary world of Roald Dahl accessible to millions of children, meaning that families together can share in some of the magic of The BFG (J’s favourite!) and George and his Marvellous Medicine!

McDonald’s Happy Readers campaign was created to put more books into the hands of families. Did you know that recent research revealed that almost one in seven children don’t have a book of their own! The teacher in me finds this so upsetting and is just one of the reasons why I love this venture from our much loved ‘golden arches’.

We were very lucky on Saturday morning to receive a gorgeous little box set of the books which are available! And I have to say, they are already a treasured set in this house. To support the books there is also a fab app – the Happy Studio App, which really helps to bring the books to life through sounds and animations and games! With half term just around the corner be sure to schedule in a wee trip to your local Micky D’s 😉

Many thanks to AikenPR for the invite on Saturday morning and for providing some of the images for this post.