Wednesday, March 14, 2012

school visit days

It's March and it's my school visit month. I've (perhaps unwisely) filled my month with traveling and visiting schools. Would you like to know what does a typical school visit presentation entail? Well, this is how my  "How a Book is Made" presentation usually goes (from a recent local visit):

First, a lovely welcome:
isn't this cute? this is also encouraging because it tells me the students are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about my books 

Then a short intro about my work and making sure students know the difference between a published book and non-published book:



Next, I go through the steps of publishing, calling up students in the audience to play the parts of editor, art director, etc:




Until I show all the steps it takes to make a published book:

Then, I read a short excerpt from one of my published books:



And then--my favorite part-- teaching the students how to draw a dragon:





And that is the presentation! This is the presentation I usually do for 1-3 graders, I do completely different ones for the older grades. However, I'll be doing this quite a bit this month!