I love this school. The scientific inquiry. The diversity. The joy of learning. It felt like the most wonderful educational family I have encountered and I miss them already! Extraordinary librarian Suzanne Fox, who I’d met when she worked at another school, invited me. I also had the pleasure of making friends with librarian Frances Martindale. Her reading style is fantastic. If I were doing an audio book, I’d call her to do the voice. Head of School Ralph Wales was so supportive and welcoming. This private school is serious about their mandate to bring racial and cultural diversity into their school. They have faculty and students of many backgrounds. Their library books and major projects are chosen to open children’s eyes to the possibilities for themselves and the world.  They embrace science even at the youngest ages. The Kindergarteners, preschoolers, and I had some  brain-expanding science talks.  I just want to hang out at Gordon. The atmosphere is that joyful and stimulating.

Jeff and I just returned from a 4,600 mile roadtrip to research at desert sites (White Sands, Painted Desert, Meteor Crater). I gave two programs at the spectacular Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. I also spoke at a conference for early childhood teachers coordinated by Jennifer Haggart of the Early Childhood Consortium of the Omaha Area. Rockin’ awesome folks in Omaha and I learned a lot from Isabel Baker and Peg Callahan, who were  presenting all sorts of new young books. Thanks to M. Susan McWilliams of the Omaha Literacy Partnership, University of Nebraska, who helped provide support and facilities.

Meanwhile, I have finished the photos for Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant. (Due out May 2012) and the layouts I’m seeing are scrumptious.

See what A Year of Reading has to say. Shirley Duke posted extension activities here: Simply Science Blog. Back to photographing fruit for Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant, which is out next year. Mangosteen, anyone?

The conference runs Nov 15-19th. 397 sessions from 62 countries!

Check it out! Just select your time zone to see what’s happening.

Sessions are recorded for viewing later, too.

Monday April 26th, 2-3 p.m. Signing at Henry Holt booth

Tuesday April 27th, 9-10 a.m. Signing at Charlesbridge booth

Thank you to Isabel Baker at the Book Vine, who hosted me at DVAEYC, the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children, where I spoke last week. (Philadelphia was awesome!) Isabel specializes in children’s books perfect for the youngest students and the educators who work with them. Her business is in Illinois but she ships far and wide.

Ah, the halls were festooned with beautiful bumblebees and flowers. A shiny paper mirror said “Look here to see the author.” How wonderful for each student to see a young author in themselves.  We had some of the first art celebration of He’s a Howler: a howler paper quilt. Beautiful!

Many of the students were studying geography. They had done drawings and short writing pieces about the features of continents to go with my continent books.

One classroom did a hilarious counting riff on One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. They did counting by eyes.

One class analyzed and classified the information in Bumblebee Queen.

Another class created new versions of the fish chant but with ocean fish. They created fish cutouts, wrote reports about features and behavior. Then they drew a fanciful sea/town scene where the fish swam. It was nonfiction with a visual fiction twist, in the spirit of Trout, Trout, Trout. Hooray!

One of my favorites was the bird poetry written by the fourth graders. Using Vulture View as a model, the teacher had created a form with key words and phrases from Vulture View. Students each drew a bird species and filled in what that bird would or would not eat and how it would move. Brilliant.

A highlight of my visit was two small sessions with young authors and illustrators. I will never forget my discussions with them! I hope that Reading Rainbow Book entry goes well.

This is a fine school with energetic educators and students that are excited to learn. The students were well prepared for my visit and worked well together in the assembly setting. The faculty welcomed me. Students and staff have much to be proud of; together they have made an environment for learning. As an author, it was a pleasure to visit.

Thank you, librarian Ms. Brown, for bringing me in to share this joyful place with you.

I’d just been to Seven Hills-Lotspeich. How could another school day be just as fun? Well, if you’re at the other Seven Hills Campus—Doherty. It can! This Cincinnatti school just percolates with life. If I were going to be a teacher, I’d want to work in one of the Seven Hills Schools.

Why? Because excellent schools need faculty that care for one another, that lunch together, that chat and exchange ideas.  This school has it on both campuses. Education can be joyous when staff share that passion for helping students. But left alone in classrooms, teachers can grow isolated, like stay-at-home moms who love their kids but need some grownup time now and then. Staff development makes it sound all technical. That is helpful. But the core of the best schools I have seen is a caring staff community: community that nurtures creative teachers and does not squash them. You could see it at work, hear it at work during my lunch with some of the Doherty teachers.

Seven Hills also has another community that uplifts the place. The parents. Wow. They pitch in for all kinds of things. At the whirling center of joy is librarian Linda Wolfe who I had the pleasure of spending the day with.

She is a dynamo who knows children’s literature inside out. She created wonderful activities to go with my books. Just look at what they did with Vulture View. She found some kind of scratch paper that is black with silver underneath. The students cut out vultures and scratched through to make the beautiful silvering of the feathers.

She describes how she introduces Trout Are Made of Trees to her students. To celebrate the book, she used a scale/math/art activity. She gave kids large photos of the aquatic insects. Then the children had to draw them, as accurately as possible, on the tiny pieces of paper. It’s a good thinking project. You can just imagine how many neurons fire when trying to duplicate but shrink an image.

In the halls were more art projects to celebrate If You Should Hear a Honey Guide; Dig, Wait, Listen; and other books. Penguins for Antarctica. Maps of South America. There was art of many kinds.

Among my favorites was an organizational project done by Mr. Schmidt’s class. They took my books and graphed them in various ways to show the content and relationships in the books. It’s a good way to prepare for writing books of their own.

I saw and experienced all of this in one short school day at Seven Hills Doherty. Just imagine what a student could learn in a school year of being with these hard working, creative educators.

This was the first time I’d seen activities for the new Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out. There were turtle shape poems which looked like ancient, beautiful style art. What about these wild pine cone birds for Bird, Bird, Bird? Extraordinary.

What a lovely school. The science teacher, Ms. Wildfong, showed me the science building. They have lots of animals. It really feels like a science-in-action place.

The music teacher, Ms. Wilson, shared the use of Bird, Bird, Bird: a Chirping Chant. She was teaching kids the half and quarter notes and how to use the staff by getting them to sound out and choose among a few notes to set this book to music.

The art teacher, Ms. Knoop was a wonder. Love her! She’s made a creative space, complete with old plastic toy color wheel, great supply drawers, and projects galore. She partners with another teacher to do a whole big unit on fibers. Ms. Knoop brings in wool from her sheep and they dye it with natural plant dyes and spin it. Wow. Hands on science and history and art all at the same time.

Thanks, Seven Hills, for an inspiring day. Your students and staff are great! Lunching with with these joyful, dedicated educators was a pleasure. Their ideas popped like popcorn. Really, it was like being in some of the great creative meetings I had at National Geographic. You walk away uplifted and refreshed.

(This is not the a/v program given during author visits. It is a discussion session so students should have some questions prepared. If you prefer to connect via skype, I can do that as well.)

Honorarium:

$625  for 3 one-hour long chats over the course of a day

$450  for 2 one-hour long chats over the course of a day

$250 for 1 one-hour long chat

I am be happy to autograph bookplates before or after the chat. Please send bookplates and the autograph list.

My signings: Sunday  Henry Holt 2-3 pm

Sunday Charlesbridge 4-5 pm   Stop by and say hello!

Can’t come? Check out the booktalks wiki for booktalk texts.

Wow. This is the largest young author event I have seen. Over the course of 4 days, about 3,000 students from surrounding school districts were brought to Northern Michigan University. Students rotated from my talk to speakers including a musician, an Arctic explorer, and an expert on a local trout restoration program. Some students were given outdoor nature and journaling time, too.

The audiences were enthusiastic, thanks to the local educators. My programs were introduced by creative chants, memorized poetry readings, and even a full performance of Splish, Splash, Animal Baths, complete with orchestra and animal costumes/dance. (Thank you, Ms. Asplund and Ishpeming Strings!)

Of course what makes this event special was that each student had written a book. I was there to celebrate them! Teachers who choose to attend bring their entire class. Every student in the class writes a book. This is folded into the curriculum. 

Students learn by doing. They had so many insightful questions about writing and nonfiction. You could tell they were really digging into the writing process. The conference is a yearlong goal and makes their writing come alive.

Just look at what students are doing in a classroom I visited. (They won me in a raffle. But after meeting the teacher and kids, I felt like I was the one who won.) They made bags for all the writing they did in class that year. I love the message on their wall.

The young author conference  was cohesive and so well run. I wish I had photos of the huge, overstuffed notebook of instructions that is passed on from committee to committee, year after year. That helps make it work.  Committee members carry over so that not all the conference coordinators are new each year. The event features a banquet/gathering of local literacy educators and reading supporters—basically the dynamic, creative folks of the community. I could have talked to them all night!

Lisa Gravedoni and the rest of the committee made my visit a joy. They sure know hospitality. Thanks to them, kind of fell in love with the people and landscape of Marquette. The beautiful lake. The beautiful trees. The outdoorsy, positive attitudes of the people up there.  They make the best of snow by skiing, snowshoeing, dogsledding—doing just about everything you can imagine. It’s a climate not without its hardships, yet the people seem to embrace life, even hug the stuffing out of it.  

If it weren’t for my tropic-loving, southern blood, I’d move on up there for life. I liked it that much. They have a yummy thai restaurant and a cozy local bookstore, Snowbound Books. The bookstore name gives me pause. But I understand that being snowbound does give you time to do crafts . . .

On the drive home from the U.P., way down in the L.P., a huge black bear crossed the highway in front of us. Was that a sign? Should we return to the U.P.?  I’m thinking . . .

INK blog

A tiara was involved. Need I say more?

There were many nonfiction sessions, even some running concurrently.  I gave a breakout introduction to nonfiction voice and also an intensive for experienced nonfiction writers. For that session I covered structure and voice as tools for digging deeper and making writing more creative. While there I met lots of terrific nonfiction authors, including Melissa Stewart, Loree Griffin Burns, and Lita Judge. 

Really, if their conference is like this every year, go, go, go! I also attended sessions on illustrating digitally, illustrating board books, plotting mysteries, and creating fiction series. Bought a book about comic books and graphic novel creation. Yes, I dipped my toes into all sorts of work. They smartly planned in plenty of time for networking, as well.  Thanks, NESCBWI!

One focus was graphing. Students researched a topic and then graphed what they learned. Sometimes it was the part of an animal’s body. Sometimes it was a fact related to the animal. Some students did this work after reading Ant, Ant, Ant: an Insect Chant.

Another strategy used by literacy coach Lee Motley at Red Bank Elementary is to have young students, right after reading, talk/write/draw about what they remember from a book. This solidifies what they have learned. It carries it from past memory into future understanding.

Still other students and one brilliant teacher took facts from The Bumblebee Queen and leapt into their own creative ABCs of bees. Beautiful! Reorganizing what you have learned solidifies it, as well.

My thanks to the teachers and librarians at the Lexington Elementary Schools.