MORE than 1,200 youngsters will take to the stage next month in a momentous musical gathering.

The massive Making Music spectacle takes place at lakes leisure Kendal from June 7-10 and features 29 primary schools from across South Lakeland.

One of the region’s leading musical figures, Anne Pater, picks up the baton once again to reprise the successful Adventures of Bookman and Robyn (and Stanley), first performed in Kendal eight years ago.

“We are having a wonderful time putting all the actions to the songs,” mentioned Anne, former teacher at Kendal’s Dean Gibson School, who along with Mary Gordon, was the inspiration behind the legendary Kendal Young Singers.

“The children have been really well prepared by their teachers and are full of enthusiasm,” added Ms Pater.

The story was penned by teacher Jonathan Humble with music by Ms Pater and tells the tale of Robyn and Stanley, two schoolchildren who are both facing personal problems.

Their literacy work in school is interrupted by the arrival of the library van, and as they go off with the other members of their class to choose their books they encounter Bookman, who turns out to be a superhero with a difference.

As a result, they step into the world of books and become embroiled in a series of adventures.

Ms Pater said they reprised Bookman because it was perhaps one of the best plays Mr Humble wrote and its songs still had a great deal of appeal: “It’s been a good opportunity for Jonathan and I to tweak it.

“There’s a new rock number, two of the songs have better endings and there is some new script.”

The enormous cast also features adult actors in some of the main character parts: Richard Pater plays Bookman and South Lakeland’s ‘Mr Entertainment’ Steve Hall takes on a myriad of parts from the Pirate King to the wicked Count Otto von Nasty.

Kirsty MacLean - who was in the movement chorus when Bookman was first produced - will take a break from studying singing at Manchester’s prestigious Cheethams music school, to sing solo in one of the pieces.