The first ever Pop Up Festival of Stories took place over the weekend of July 9^th & 10^th 2011 in Coram’s Fields and The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury, attended by almost 6000 children and parents. There was magic, poetry, art and jazz with Michael Rosen and friends, mystery and illusion inside Philip Ardagh’s ‘House of Illusions’, myth-making with Geraldine McCaughrean, movies at the Renoir Cinema, and Moomins holding tea-parties. James Mayhew made a giant pop-up book, Axel Scheffler came with Pip and Posy, Rastamouse creators Michael De Souza and Genevieve Webster whipped up a carnival, Catherine Johnson made up tall tales in her ‘Nest of Vipers’ tavern, while illustrators, storytellers, dancers and musicians entertained inside Karin Littlewood's enchanting ‘Immi’s Igloo’. And everything was free! The sun shone all weekend long, the marquees were bursting to capacity, and they never stopped selling books at The Guardian Bookshop. What a wonderful, story-filled weekend it was!

By Shaniah Chan & Martin Spensley

On Tuesday 7th June, the day after Anthony Browne launched Pop Up, we went to the beautiful Guardian and Observer building, and sat in a crowd of famous authors, illustrators and publishers to find out who the new Children's Laureate was.

Before the announcement, we listened to a number of people's speeches, including Viv Bird, Ed Vaisey MP, Michael Neil, Francesca Dow, Anthony Browne and Baroness Floella Benjamin. They each spoke about what they do, and how they are a part of the event - but they also built up the tension!

After a long, exciting wait, Julia Donaldson was crowned Children's Laureate 2011-13! The whole hall filled with clapping as Julia made her way to the stand to speak. She spoke about how happy she was to get the award, and about her very popular book, The Gruffalo - and then she read a very funny poem.

A little while later, we and four other children who'd won a competition, got the chance to meet and interview Julia. You can listen to our interview as part of this Guardian podcast.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/audio/2011/jun/07/julia-donaldson-children-s-laureate

They spent the whole day learning from professional journalists and photo-journalists from The Guardian and Live magazine how to tell a news story. Not just in words, but through photography too!

Why? Because Pop Up Ambassadors are going to all of our school author events to report on the experience, take photographs, and interview the authors. Then they’ll submit their articles and photos, and we’ll upload them – so you’ll be able to see their reports in the ‘Pop Up Books’ section of the website.

Thanks to Fiona McKellar at The Guardian and Ria Bartlett at British Library for organising this brilliant day. And special thanks to Celeste at Live magazine, and Linda Mooney, Alison Benjamin, David Levene, Katherine Rose, Yvonne Singh, Patrick Kingsley, Megen Clarke and Haroon Siddique from The Guardian for being such fantastic mentors!