Joshua, 10, Matthew, 9 and twins Luke and Ruth, 6 Cook from Leigh On Sea in Essex are proud authors of a book called Summer Holiday Adventure. The children sold copies of the book to raise money for charity.

You recently all appeared in the local papers because of a book you wrote. What gave you the idea to write this?
Joshua: Last summer we went on holiday to a brilliant place in Yorkshire. We stayed in a friend’s cottage and it was just the sort of place for an adventure. We often pretend to be either The Famous Five (Enid Blyton) or The Big Six (Arthur Ransome) so we had a great time.
Matthew: Joshua was reading some of the Arthur Ransome books for the Big Wild Read at the library and while we were on holiday mum read one of them to us all. I think it was Swallows and Amazons. It’s about some children on holiday and they make an adventure out of the things they do. We decided to do the same thing.
Joshua: We used the things that we’d done and the photos mum had taken as the basis for a story and then made up lots of other bits to make it into an adventure.
Luke: We each chose our names for the story and we made up lots of bits that we wished had happened. Matthew and I chose our middle names (David and James).
Ruth: I was Nancy – she was the leader of the ‘Amazons’ in Swallows and Amazons.
Joshua: I chose to be Tom because he’s my favourite character in Coot Club.
Ruth: We told mum all our ideas and she typed it all up for us. When it was finished we called it Summer Holiday Adventure because that’s what it was!

What is the story about?
Ruth: The story is about four children (us!). They go out for the day down to the beach at Robin Hood Bay. We did that too but we had mum and dad with us.
Luke: We walked a long way to a waterfall, collecting fossils and stones along the way. In our story we saw some pirates and found a secret passageway behind the waterfall. That was the start of an exciting adventure which included other places we had been.

How long did it take to write?
Joshua: It took about a week to write and then mum printed out lots of copies for us.

What was the hardest part about writing it?
Matthew: Choosing which ideas to use –we had so many we couldn’t fit everything in!
Joshua: It was hard waiting for the next instalment to be ready because mum couldn’t type it up quickly enough! There were a few arguments over which character did which bits as we all wanted to have the good bits. Nobody wanted their character to do anything silly!
Luke: Mum wrote down what we said and then we had to go to bed and wait till the next morning for her to read it to us!
Ruth: It was quite easy really as mum did the hard bit. I can’t write that much yet.

How did you sell your book?
Matthew: We had a proper book launch and signed copies for people. We invited loads of people round for tea and cake – they could eat as much cake as they liked as long as they bought a book!
Luke: We made all our friends buy it. At first mum printed it at home but then we needed so many copies we got it printed properly.
Ruth: We made some posters and put them up at school. We sold the book in the playground at home time.
Joshua: We sold some to people at church as well and some of our friends and relations took them into work to sell. We also left ten copies at Little Havens for them to sell.

What did you do with the money you made?
Joshua: All the money went to Little Havens. I think we raised about £300 altogether.
Luke: They liked our story. They took our photo when we took some money in to them.

What are your favourite subjects at school?
Ruth: Swimming, ‘Special Box’ time and Choosing time.
Luke: Art, Swimming and Choosing.
Matthew: I like ICT and playtimes best.
Joshua: I like Art and Computers. I’m in Year 5 now and I can’t wait to do Science at Senior School. The Science we do is too easy.

What would you like to do when you grow up? Anyone want to be an author?
Luke: There’s lots of things I’d like to be: a diver, a policeman and a teacher I think. I might be an author - I love writing.
Ruth: A ballerina. No I don’t want to be an author, if I wrote for a long time my arms would ache!
Joshua: I want to be a scientist.
Matthew: A footballer.

What do you think makes a teacher a good teacher?
Ruth: Reading us stories at the end of the day.
Luke: Being strict.
Matthew: Teachers should be kind and helpful.
Joshua: A good teacher is strict but at the same time very fair.