Author Visits

This is a highlight of the library/media center school year.  We are fortunate that our HSA wants our students to experience an author "upclose and personal."  We have authors come to our school as well as Skyping with them.

November 1015:  Ronnie Arno visited our school to tell us all about her first published book Ruby Reinvented.  We spent time reading parts of the novel to get ready for her visit.  Students were invited to create a fashion outfit to win lunch with Ronnie.  What wonderful fashion designers are in our building!

November 12, 2014:  Jeff Campbell stopped by for an author visit.  This was especially exciting since he is a parent at our school.  His first book, Daisy to the Rescue, was just published in October.  To prep for his visit students broke into groups and were given one of his short non-fiction stories.  Then they had to create a "Fakebook" for that animal.  It was a lot of work but a lot of fun.  The students had a great time creating the social media conversations.  And, to their surprise for some reason, all of the groups were able to find actual images of their celebrity animal to include!  #ForRealStories! 

For his first official author visit:  Job well done, Mr. Campbell.

On December 19, 2013, award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney visited our school.  Ms. Pinkney shared anecdotes about how she gets ideas for stories and how she saves all her ideas in notebooks tht she brings with her everywhere.  She also shared excerpts from books such as Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down and Duke Ellington, a Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor Book.  The students were excited to see pages from many of the books we had read before her visit.  Thank you once again to our great HSA for providing the funds for Andrea Davis Pinkney's visit. And, thank you, Andrea, for an informative and entertaining presentation!

Lenore Look visited our school in April 2013.  We fell in love with Ruby Lu and Alvin Ho.  But our favorite part was learning how to create Shakespearean insults!  Here's just a snippet of how it went:

The first Skype, in 2010, was with Candace Fleming.  She did a wonderful talk with the students about the tools a writer needs.  She also explained the difference between primary and secondary resources.  Below is some raw footage where Candace explains writing non-fiction.





Dan Gutman has visited our school twice - the most recent was June of 2012.  Always a crowd-pleaser, Dan did not let anyone down.  He gives a lively presentation where he shares his ideas and the rejection letters for one of his most popular books.

David A. Adler, better known as the author of Cam Jansen books, visited in November 2010.  He gave us a peek into how he comes up with his ideas.  He let us know that hooking your reader from the very beginning is very important.

Other visits -