A few pictures from the Virginia Festival of the Book

This year, in addition to visiting schools, I gave a book talk as part of Va Book's Storyfest line-up. It was a rainy day, but we had a nice group of families. Here are a few pictures, taken by my dad, our photographer for the day.

Coloring sheets for all:

Artwork on display:

Talking to kids about how to make a book:

Drawing demo:

Kids making their own illustrations:

And coloring in my drawings:

A quiet moment at the end of the day:

Festival interview

Just returned from a busy week in Virginia at the Festival of the Book. More on that soon! In the meantime, here is a clip from an interview I did for the local news while I was in Charlottesville. It was a total thrill being on a real news set... watching the weather guy in front of the green screen, the anchors chatting casually the second they cut to commercial, how all the graphics and pieces came together to create what you see on screen. One of the anchors spent each of the commercial breaks either surfing the web or texting. I guess once you're used to being on tv you have to fill up that time somehow. Anyhow, I had a blast. I hope it shows. Please pardon my frog voice (I had a cold).

Virginia Festival of the Book

Next week I will be packing up the car and heading south for the Virginia Festival of the Book. It takes place in my hometown of Charlottesville, so it's always a mix of visiting friends and family, visiting schools, giving book talks, and enjoying an early dose of spring. In the past I've flown down. But this year Bruno and Tilda will join me and given the mountain of stuff a traveling baby requires, we decided to drive. I am mildly terrified of 10 hours in the car with a toddler, but very excited about the festival.

This year I'll be visiting 5 schools (including the first elementary school I ever attended!), giving a couple of weekend events, and will be interviewed on the local news. I grew up watching my hometown news, so that will be an extra thrill.

If you are in the area, the festival is well worth checking out with hundreds of events around town. But most especially, come join me if you can for these gatherings:

Making a Picture Book with Anna Alter
Sat. March 24th, 2012 - 10:00 AM

A StoryFest Event! Anna Alter shares her latest picture book. Children learn how a book is created from start to finish and then participate in their own art project. Original artwork from Anna's books will be on display. Anna's own books available for purchasing and signing.

Location:
CitySpace--Charlottesville Community Design Center
100 5th Street NE
(434)984-2232

Book Signing at Alakazam
Sun. March 25th, 2012 - 1:00 PM

Author and illustrator Anna Alter shares her book A Photo for Greta and an art activity with her Alakazam fans.

Location:
Alakazam Toys and Gifts
100 E Main St
(434)971-1717

Back North

Last week was the busiest I've had in awhile! As I mentioned in my last post, I was traveling down South to give school visits as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book and a few other lovely book gatherings. I am from Virginia, so its always fun to go back there and visit family and friends while I have some book fun. And of course its encouraging to see the first signs of spring that have not yet made their way to Massachusetts:



I had the pleasure of speaking to both little kiddos and teachers... the week began at James Madison University speaking to their kidlit class, taught by the amazing Joan Kindig. Teachers always have such great questions and are so polite, enthusiastic, and fun to talk to, truly its one of my favorite groups to visit.

Then I began my week of visiting little ones. One school I went to was having a "book-in" on the day of my visit. Everyone came to school in pajamas, ate chocolate chip pancakes and waffles, and laid around reading books all day (sounds like a good time to me!). The campus was composed largely of log cabins in the woods and had the most adorable little library I've ever seen. Don't you just want to curl up in one of those rocking chairs and read all afternoon?



Here I am drawing a soccer playing dragon, as suggested by my very cute audience of K-3rd graders:


In my slideshow I start by showing a pic of me drawing as a little kid:


Then I show them all the cats in my house growing up, which inspired me to make up animal stories:

The week finished off at the New Jersey Annual Kindergarten Teacher's spring conference, where they had a "go green" theme, and thus brought me in to talk about What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe? A Green Activity Book About Reuse. I had a lot of fun walking through how this book evolved, and what the book making process is like. I went over my favorite art activities from my years spent teaching, such as painting with "texture paintbrushes" and making paper by hand:





Then I described how these led to the activities with reused materials I made up for Old Red Shoe, such as the flip-flop activity:




And of course what you can do with that old red shoe:


These teachers just blew me away with their creativity... they collected 20 pairs of old red shoes and made centerpieces for each of the lunch tables, with green chrysanthemums, that looked like this:





And a decoration for the podium (Dorothy shoes!):


Groups of teachers presented their own recycling activity ideas, including this tri-fold board with ideas about how to combine recycling with math activities:


There were recycling songs with Woodsy the owl (Smokey the Bear's sidekick, remember?) sung bravely for the group:


One teacher made a ring toss with an old soda bottle, an Edible Arrangements box, and some reused tinfoil:


There was also a hockey game made from a pizza box and laundry detergent bottle tops (genius!):


And another favorite, a bowling set made from milk jugs and a tinfoil ball:


Thanks to everyone who made the week so much fun!

Virginia Festival of the Book

I am just settling back into Boston after a lovely in week in Charlottesville (my hometown) at the Virginia Festival of the Book. It wasn't quite as warm as other years, I didn't get to wear flip-flops like last year, but we did hit 70 on Wednesday! And I got to see some flowers in bloom before returning to the arctic north. Here is a little preview of spring for those of you weathering March in New England:







I was especially pleased to see these, clearly someone had an advance copy of What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe?:



The festival itself went great! I visited three head start programs, two elementary schools and met the most delightful librarians. On Saturday I threw an event open to the public at an art center with my mom, a local art teacher. The response was overwhelming- families began arriving half an hour before we planned to start, and quickly filled the room! As most authors will attest, its pretty challenging to draw people out to book signings these days, so I was really quite thrilled to see such a crowd. I was lucky enough to have my dad the photographer there taking pictures, he got this great shot of the room during my talk:



I began by comparing my very first book to my most recent, then went about explaining all the steps in between:



I finished by drawing some of the characters in RED SHOE:



Then invited kids to come color them in, which was a big hit:



After the talk kids rushed our recycling craft table, grown-ups had a peek at the original art for the book and I busily signed books and chatted with folks. All in all a great day! Its going to be a lovely spring.

Trip to Virginia

I've just returned from a week in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia doing school visits for the Va Festival of the Book. This was my second trip down for the festival. Its fun for me to attend because not only do I get to visit schools in the neighborhoods where I grew up, but I get a little dose of spring before it arrives here in Boston.

In Charlottesville the daffodils are in bloom:



The forsythia is bursting yellow all over:



And the friend's house where I stayed sits next to a fully blooming plum tree that floats tiny pink petals all over place:



Ah, the good life. Sitting on porches on warm afternoons, waving a lazy hello to the neighbors. I can't say I was thrilled to return to the grey cloud that is Boston in March.

When I wasn't staring wistfully at the flowers and trying to soak up as much sun as possible, I was touring around local schools and doing my school visit presentation. I think this is the most public speaking I've ever done in 3 days. I visited 5 schools and gave 14 talks to more than 1000 kids.

The last day I was there was the most intense... on Thursday schools were closed due to a bizarre incident on the highway that runs through town. Charlottesville is a pretty peaceful place so it was fairly shocking that someone would sit on the side of the highway and shoot at cars. Fortunately they caught the guy pretty quickly, he was caught on video shooting at a bank awhile back, in a bright orange Gremlin. Did he want to get caught?

Anyways, as a result of the schools shutting down when I was supposed to visit them, I needed to fit two days worth of visits into one. I began on Friday at 8 am and gave 2 presentations at one elementary school. I hopped in my car and drove to a second school and gave another. Then I drove back to the first school and did 2 more talks. Then finally to a third school where I gave one more talk. Normally I don't do more than 4 talks in one day, it was a marathon for sure!

I was greeted by enthusiastic librarians who did a phenomenal job of prepping the kids (so important). One in particular went above and beyond decorating the school before I came:



I don't have many shots of the larger groups I visited, but here is one of me (midsentence of course, ha, pics of me talking are always super nerdy) visiting a Head Start program. This was my first time visiting Head Start, and was a fun reminder of my preschool teaching days (the kids are SO tiny). Here I am making a drawing with some 4 year olds, they came up with this character which they named Tina the Turtle:



Favorite quote from the week:

Me: "Does anyone know what happens when a book gets published?"
First grader, in a sweet southern accent: "They fancy it up!"