Book Week

Covid put the kibosh on live author/illustrator events, which has been such a bummer. Visiting schools, bookstores and libraries used to be one of the joys of my life! 

Lucky for me, my husband works at Shattuck-St. Mary's Forest City International School in Johor, Malaysia. As the only author/illustrator in residence, I was the obvious choice to be the school's Book Week guest. Technically, I was probably the only option, thanks to Covid; but hey, let's not parse the details. I was so grateful to be invited, and Book Week at SSM-FC turned out to be spectacular!

Throughout the week I got to visit classrooms from PreK through 5th grade. The smaller children and I read books together—many of mine, but also, I got to read books that the kids have been writing. Wonderful!

Showing thumbnail sketches from The Obamas: A Lift-the-Flap Book to a 4th grade class.

For the older kids, I read from my books, but also explained the process of illustration.

The main event was a half-hour presentation to grades 6-12 in the school's auditorium. I spent a lot of time preparing for this, honing a PowerPoint to keep me on track and on time, as much as to provide visuals for the mostly bilingual student body. (Many ESL students in the masked, socially-distanced crowd!)

The upper school principal provided me with talking points, which I was careful to include. The resulting presentation is divided fairly evenly into three sections: the story of how I got into publishing, what my life as an author/illustrator is like, and a general description of the publishing industry.

Click here to watch the whole thing on YouTube. Hopefully some of you teachers can find a use for this in your classrooms. It's chock full of visuals. Enjoy!