Author Visit - Matt Tavares

It has been a YEAR in the making, but last week our school hosted author/illustrator Matt Tavares. Matt was great and the students loved him. He talked about how he writes and illustrates his books and he tailored each presentation to the different grade levels he saw throughout the day. He also has the COOLEST story about how he uncovered some facts about Hank Aaron's first home run in the major leagues - my students found that to be pretty cool! The story is on his website if you would like to read it.

While Matt was here, he also filmed a segment for our local school districts' TV station, GCPS TV. They call the series The Author in You and Matt filmed here with a few of our students. The TV station is now online and I will post a link to the show when it is on their website. In the meantime, check them out, they have some great original programing.

Since Matt writes a lot about baseball I decided to try and get our local minor league team, the Gwinnett Braves (GBraves) to host a night for my school and also host Matt that night since his latest book is about the most famous Brave of all time, Hank Aaron. I put the GBraves in touch with Matt's publisher Candlewick Press and they arranged to have Matt throw out the first pitch, have the first 200 kids receive a copy of Henry Aaron's Dream and have Matt sign them. And I SWEAR I had nothing to do with this, BUT who were the GBraves playing that night... yep, the Pawtucket Red Sox. My youngest son, the aspiring Red Sox player ,got to go on the field with Matt and help him warm up before the big pitch, I think it was a thrill for BOTH of them to be on the field. Matt did a great job throwing out the first pitch, but I think he was a little disappointed that the Paw Sox didn't come recruit him (then again, the way the Sox are playing these days, maybe they made a mistake!). I ended up selling 400 tickets to the game and our chorus sang the national anthem (they did such a great job!) We all had SUCH a good time and the students thought it was SO cool that Matt and his family sat with us at the game!

I love author visits, and to me, they are so worth the time, effort and money that a media specialist puts into having them, but the two days that Matt was here and all the activities that we had planned while he was here was SOO much fun and so worth it. It might be hard to top this next year....

Take a look at this quick slide show for pictures from Matt's visit.

Author Visit: Deborah Wiles

Wednesday I was fortunate enough to host author Deborah Wiles in my media center. She came and spoke to some of my 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students. I LOVE doing author visits, especially with authors who have a presentation that really INSPIRES the kids - and Deborah does on so many levels.

She talked to the kids about writing and how she finds inspiration in her own life. She showed the kids slides of her writers notebooks and one of my teachers commented that she LOVED that she showed the kids the lists she makes in the notebooks- this teacher makes the kids do lists for writers workshop and she said the students can never figure out WHY they write lists. The best part of her presentation for me was the very end. She talks about her book Freedom Summer - and while I have always thought that it is a very powerful book, hearing her describe the events that made her write it is... well.. even more powerful, especially for someone who did not grow up in the south in the 1960's.

This author visit also felt like having an old friend come over for a visit. Deborah and I have only met once before this, but she was good friends with author Coleen Salley who I had the pleasure of hosting last year (which was her last school visit before she passed away last fall). During lunch we got to talk and "gossip" as Coleen called it and it was so much FUN!

Here are a few pictures of our day.

My clerk Cindy, Deborah and myself

Awesome Laurel

OK, so I know I blogged about Laurel coming to visit, promised pictures then.. well... I got sick, then had Thanksgiving to think about and well... no excuses...

Laurel's visit was FABULOUS - the kids loved her, Laurel enjoyed talking with my students and I think a good time was had by all.  There was even a castle cake (made by my awesome partner in crime, Mrs. H - 4th grade teacher)

I think the kids loved that Laurel was a real, cool person. She answered their questions, laughed at their play and told them that she started writing when she was THEIR AGE - WOW. I think more than a few of the kids went home that night and started writing their own book.  

Here are a few pictures from the day...

Group hug!

Laurel and I 

Laurel - in the background is a picture some of the kids drew for their "play" that they performed for Laurel.

I'm EXCITED!

Tomorrow author Laurel Snyder is coming to my school for a visit - and all because of the kidlitosphere!

Laurel got my e-mail from Jen Robinson, I guess Laurel was looking for some kidlit lovers in GA and Jen knew I lived in GA and passed on my info to Laurel who e-mailed me.  My life was CRAZY at the time, but I followed Laurels Blog and became a Facebook friend and was so excited when she had her first book, Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains published.  I met her at the Decatur Book Festival, where my daughter was Laurels first official book signing - how cool is that.

Well, around that time a 4th grade teacher was looking for some ideas for her gifted kids to do a book study and I recommended Laurel's book and I asked Laurel if she would like to do an author visit with the 14 kids...

and so now tomorrow she is COMING to visit us.  The kids are SOO excited - they are going to eat lunch with her and then they have a super secret thing planned for her!

This is the part of being a media specialist I love the most - connecting kids with reading in ways that they might not get a chance to otherwise.

I will have pictures and stories tomorrow!!