More School Visits!

It’s been a busy couple of months since I last put out a newsletter, and this time has included some great school visits!

In early December, I had one of my best author events ever as a guest of the Friends of the Library in Hot Springs, North Carolina. Here’s a picture of me teaching the kids at Hot Springs Elementary School to shout like an Acro-Rat (maybe a little too successfully for the teachers’ taste)—

I also had the opportunity to speak to the 4th Grade at Rainbow Community School in Asheville, where I talked a little bit more about my writing process than I have before, as part of their fiction writing unit—

I LOVE school visits, even though I’m always nervous about doing them. But so far I’ve never met a bad kid, and answering questions usually winds up with me learning more than the students could possibly glean from my responses. What’s more, I hear from teachers and librarians that an author visit generally leads to a big surge in interest in reading. And the surge extends beyond the books of the visiting author. Meeting a real human being whose name has made it onto a cover can renew a student’s love for reading in general. And that’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.

So—do you know a school that might like a visit from the author of Tales of a Fifth Grade Knight? If you’re a teacher and you think a visit to your school might be welcome, please let me know! And if you’re a parent, feel free to let folks at your child’s school know about me. I’ve set up a new page on my website specifically about my school visits, and you can pass the link on to them.

Onward!