Two visits and a review

The past week has been a busy one, though perhaps not as busy as Alvina's travels. Here are a few highlights:

*On Father's Day I visited Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast to talk about the making of A Photo for Greta. A big thanks to Jules for having me! Read my post here.

*I had a lovely school visit in Newton, the first after taking some time off for maternity leave. It was a lot of fun to read my new book to a group of kids at last (I've read it during some Skype visits this spring, but this was the first time in person). When I tell kids about the book making process, I describe how I made a watercolor "test" of my palette in order to choose which colors I will use in the illustrations. I usually show them this palette, which I made for Francine's Day:

When I got home I was greeted by a sweet email from the organizer, whose son attended my talk. When he arrived home he pulled out his watercolors and made his own paint palette, then proceeded to paint all of his stuffed animals:

Such a talented artist, nice work Jared! I hope you will keep painting and visit the library often.

*Publisher's Weekly gave A Photo for Greta this lovely review. A snippet: "As she did in Disappearing Desmond, Alter displays notable sensitivity to children’s insecurities and doubts, while providing reassurance of their worth." Thanks PW!

*And lastly, Tilda is now eating butternut squash, which she prefers to feed herself. Next thing you know she will be applying to college.

Skype visits

Spring is usually my busy time for school visits (by usually I mean when I am on the east coast and not juggling a new baby), this year I had to make some changes. Lately I've been loving doing skype school visits. You can visit schools all over the place (next month I'm skyping with a school in Alaska!) without having to get on a plane, which is a lot more convenient now that I'm a mother. I plan to resume regular visits soon, but in the mean time its been a great solution. Kids get excited about the new technology (a couple of times its started some interesting discussions about time zones) and I get to talk with kids about books from home. The other day I got an awesome package of thank you notes from a skype visit in Masbeth, New York:

(Sorry about the hard questions Lindsey)

Sometimes there are technical issues, Skype can freeze or pixelate if you have a bad connection. I'm hoping the technology evolves soon. I've heard googlechat is pretty good quality, though I don't know how it would look when blown up by a projector. If anyone has had some experience with it or any other video chat I'd love to know what you think!

My first school visit!

Authors and illustrators do school visits all the time, but how often to editors do school visits? Uh, never? Well, a few weeks ago, as a favor to two friends of mine, I spoke at a school out in Newark, NJ to help them kick off their Literacy Week. I was a little nervous about it, because although I'm used to speaking in front of adults, I can't remember the last time I had to speak to a roomful of kids--if ever! But I had a wonderful time, and the kids were well behaved. I spoke to two different groups, one large group of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, and then a slightly smaller group of fifth and sixth graders.

I was asked to talk about what my job as a children's book editor entails. I talked about my company, and started off by showing some slides of the books that we publish. When I showed a slide for the Twilight books, the uproar in the room lasted a good five minutes. I have to say, it was really wonderful to see kids get so excited about books!

The kids also got excited when I showed the cover of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, because it was one of four finalists for the school's book award, voted on by 5th to 7th graders.

I talked a little bit about how I became an editor and the steps they all could take if they wanted to be an editor, too (read a lot, go to college, work at a bookstore or library, do internships, etc.). I also showed some videos, including both the official and unofficial trailers for Shark vs Train (they all applauded at the end of the official trailer), as well as a video of Grace showing off the interior of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

I hope that there were some future editors, authors, illustrators, designers, etc. in the room!

Read about my visit on the school library's blog here.

Happy Earth Week!

Like Meghan, I often completely forget to take pictures when I do school visits, so I don't have much to show from my adventures on Boston's North Shore last week. But I did recently receive an awesome package from a school where I did a Skype visit. They did an author study and had each student write a project just like the reuse activities in What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe?. To celebrate Earth Week I'll posting some of my favorites all week on my blog.

This one I love for a number of reasons. Most importantly what a great idea! When the sleeves fall off my next sweater I will definitely stick them on my cat. Also I find the author bio quite charming.

Winchester Authorfest

If any of you are in the area, come see me Thursday at the Winchester Authorfest! I'll be presenting at some local schools in the morning, then signing books at the Town Hall Book Signing in the afternoon, which is open to the public.

Here are the details:

Town Hall Book Signing
71 Mt. Vernon Street (next to Public Library)
Winchester MA 01890

3:00-5:00 pm

Last time I participated in the Authorfest there were dozens of other authors there. I don't know who will be participating this year but there is bound to be lots of amazing local talent. Its not often you have that many authors in one place!

Letters from the kiddos

One of the best parts of school visits is going through the thank you letters afterwards. They are beginning to arrive from last week's trip.

Check out these hip rollerskating foxes:



On the back of this one it says "I likt yors books vare muh":



One packet included some Abigail coloring sheets (you can download them here), I like this kid's abstract approach:



And of course there is always at least one big letter from the whole class:

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!