Author donates books to Chesterfield school after vandals target playground
Andrew Powell-Thomas decided to send signed books to Arkwright Primary School following an incident in the school’s outdoor area last month.
The playground, which includes basketball equipment, tables and benches, chess pieces and dress-up boxes, was damaged in August. Vandals knocked over benches and destroyed some of the equipment, including dress-up boxes with costumes for the youngest students.
Arkwright Primary School headmaster Ian Roberts said: ‘When I arrived I saw the mess that had been created the night before. Me and Mr. Phillips, the shopping site manager, spent quite a bit of time cleaning it up and rearranging it.
“We were able to fix a lot of things and there wasn’t a lot of lasting damage. Unfortunately someone turned on one of our outside taps and soaked all the costumes and some of them had been water damaged and unfortunately had to be thrown away.
After the incident, Mr Roberts tweeted about the damage and received many adorable responses from parents. He also got a message from children’s author Mr. Powell-Thomas who wanted to help.
Mr Roberts said: ‘Mr. Powell-Thomas has absolutely no connection with our school. It was a really kind and adorable gesture that he made. It is greatly appreciated by myself and the whole school community. He wanted to donate some books to our school to show that there are kind people in the world who want to do the right thing. It was very thoughtful of him. The signed books arrived with a nice note and we have them in our library. I also shared the message with the children during an assembly and they were really happy to read it. It’s so great that we have had two books autographed especially for our students.
In a letter sent to the school, Andrew Powell-Thomas said: ‘I was so sorry to hear about what happened to your playground equipment over the summer holidays that I wanted to do something . I can’t really help you with new equipment – but I can send you some signed books to show you that there are many more good people in the world.
