AN award-winning children's author visited years 5 and 6 at Cirencester Primary School earlier this month to tell them how recycling phones can help save the lives of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Gill Lewis spoke to the children about her new book, Gorilla Dawn, in which she discusses how mobile phones and many electronic devices use rare minerals in their components that are extracted from Coltan, a process which hugely impacts on the rainforests in the DRC.

And the children were very amused when Gill dressed up in a gorilla suit and taught them phrases in the primate's language.

A spokesman for the school, Anne Hobson, said: “Many children were delighted to have their copies of her new book signed by the real author. It was great to see so many of them engrossed in the book this afternoon.”