Author: kmessner

Often, my summer calendar is full of travel for book festivals and other events, but this year, I’m looking forward to an amazing celebration of stories in my own backyard. If you’re considering a trip to the Adirondacks this summer, I hope you’ll put August 20th on your calendar because the Adirondack Family Book Festival at John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid is shaping up to be an amazing event.

A full day of read-alouds, author presentations, book sales & signings with The Bookstore Plus, writing workshops, and panels in a gorgeous mountain setting? Yes, please! The festival runs from 9:30am to 4pm on August 20th. The official website will be up soon with directions and a complete schedule for the day. But for now…check out the incredible lineup of participating authors and illustrators!

New York Times bestselling author Tracey Baptiste is best known for the popular Jumbies series and Minecraft: The Crash. She writes fiction and nonfiction from picture books to young adult. Her most recent titles include Looking for a Jumbie, African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History, and Because Claudette. Find Tracey online at www.traceybaptiste.com and connect on Twitter @traceybaptiste and on Instagram @traceybaptistewrites.

An enrolled citizen of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation, Joseph Bruchac has authored over 170 books in many genres. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in hundreds of publications from Parabola and National Geographic to Paris Review. His experiences, in addition to college teaching, include three years of volunteer teaching in Ghana and eight years directing a college program inside a maximum security prison. In 2021 his novel Code Talker was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best YA books of all time. His novel Rez Dogs was listed among the best books of 2021 by NPR. Learn more at https://www.josephbruchac.com/

Jason Chin (he/him) is a Caldecott medalist who writes and illustrates children’s picture books about science and nature. In his books he tries to explain science with imaginative storytelling. His titles include Grand Canyon (Caldecott Honor, Sibert Honor and Orbis Pictus award) and Your Place in the Universe (a 2020 Horn Book Fanfare title). His latest book, Watercress, written by Andrea Yang, won the Caldecott Medal. To learn more about the books he’s written and illustrated, visit his website: https://jasonchin.net/books/

Maxwell Eaton III is a highly tolerated author and illustrator of numerous picture books and graphic novels for children, including Bear Builds a House, Bear Goes Sugaring, The Truth About Your Favorite Animals series, The Flying Beaver Brothers series, Okay Andy, and more. When he isn’t writing or drawing, he can be found paddling a canoe in the Adirondack Mountains with his partner and two children. Find him online at http://maxwelleaton.com/.

Amy Guglielmo (she/her) is an award-winning author, educator, artist, and community arts and STEAM advocate. Her eighteen children’s book titles include the Christopher award-winning Pocket Full of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire (Atheneum 2017) and the new What the Artist Saw series with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is also the Creative Director of Reading Rainbow Live and the co-founder of Outside Art: Plattsburgh Public Art Project.

Rajani LaRocca was born in India, raised in Kentucky, and now lives in the Boston area, where she practices medicine and writes award-winning books for young readers. Her middle grade novel in verse, Red, White, and Whole, is the winner of the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Award and a 2022 John Newbery Honor. She’s always been an omnivorous reader, and now she’s an omnivorous writer of fiction and nonfiction, novels and picture books, prose and poetry. She finds inspiration in her family, her childhood, the natural world, math, science, and just about everywhere she looks. Learn more about her at www.RajaniLaRocca.com.

Kyle Lukoff is the author of many books for young readers. His debut middle-grade novel, Too Bright To See, received a Newbery honor and the Stonewall award, and was a National Book Award finalist. His picture book When Aidan Became A Brother also won the Stonewall award. His newest titles are the novel Different Kinds of Fruit and the non-fiction picture book If You’re A Kid Like Gavin. While becoming a writer he worked as a bookseller for ten years, and then nine more years as a school librarian. He hopes you’re having a nice day. http://www.kylelukoff.com/

Kekla Magoon (she/her) writes novels and nonfiction for young readers, exploring themes of identity, community, empowerment, and social justice. Acclaimed titles include The Season of Styx Malone (winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award), How It Went Down (a Coretta Scott King Honor book), and Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People, which was a Michael L. Printz Honor winner and National Book Award Finalist. Kekla loves ice cream, board games, and her two energetic orange cats. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she now teaches. Learn more at her website: https://keklamagoon.com/

New York Times bestselling author Kate Messner is passionately curious and has written more than fifty books for kids who wonder, too. Her award-winning titles include picture books like Over and Under the Snow and The Brilliant Deep; novels like Breakout and Chirp; engaging nonfiction like The Next President and the History Smashers series; the Ranger in Time adventures; and the Fergus and Zeke easy readers. Kate lives on Lake Champlain. Online, you’ll find her on Twitter @KateMessner, and at her website, katemessner.com.

Linda Sue Park is the author of many books for young readers, including the 2002 Newbery Medal winner A Single Shard and the NYTimes bestseller A Long Walk to Water. Her most recent title is The One Thing You’d Save, a collection of linked poems. Linda Sue serves on the advisory boards of We Need Diverse Books and the Rabbit hOle museum project, and created the kiBooka website, www.kibooka.com, to highlight Korean American creators of children’s books. Visit her website at www.lindasuepark.com; follow her on Twitter @LindaSuePark.

Calvin Ramsey is a playwright, writer, and photographer. He is the author of Ruth and the Green Book and Belle, the Last Mule at Gees Bend and was a recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drum Major for Justice Award. He was born in Baltimore but grew up in Roxboro, North Carolina and now splits his time between New York City and Sarasota, Florida. Learn more at his website: http://calvinalexanderramseysr.com/

A two-time National Book Award Finalist, Laura Ruby writes fiction for adults, teens and children. She is the author of the Printz Medal Winning novel Bone Gap,  as well as Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All.  Other works include the Edgar®-nominated children’s mystery Lily’s Ghosts,  the ALA Quick Pick for teens Good Girls, the York trilogy, and the picture book Me and Ms. Too. Laura is on the faculty of Hamline University’s Masters in Writing for Children Program. She makes her home in the Chicago area, and you can visit her online at https://lauraruby.com/.

I’m beyond excited that so many of my brilliant colleagues will be coming for this celebration of books and reading. And just in case the author/illustrator lineup isn’t enough to get you making travel plans, have I mentioned how pretty the Adirondacks are in August? I hope you’ll join us, too!

Are you ready for World Read Aloud Day? It’s an annual celebration of sharing stories from the amazing folks at LitWorld and Scholastic. This year’s World Read Aloud Day will be February 2, 2022!

If you’re new to this page, I’m Kate Messner, author of more than fifty books for kids, including these new releases.

I’m also a former middle school teacher and a forever reader. Each winter, I help out with LitWorld’s World Read Aloud Day by pulling together a list of author & illustrator volunteers who would like to spend part of the day doing quick virtual read-aloud visits with classrooms around the world to share the joy of stories.

Before we get to the list, I want to share one other fun WRAD surprise. This is a busy time for many authors, and while we wish we could visit every one of your classrooms live, that’s just not possible. So this year, I’ve recorded a special World Read Aloud Day video for you, from FERGUS AND ZEKE AND THE 100TH DAY OF SCHOOL! This is the fourth book in our easy reader series about two mice who are classroom pets and the best of friends. (It’s just been released, and you can order copies now!)

Okay…on to this year’s read-aloud volunteer list!

WORLD READ ALOUD DAY IS FEBRUARY 2, 2022!

The authors & illustrators listed have volunteered their time to read aloud to classrooms and libraries all over the world. These aren’t long, fancy presentations; a typical one might go like this:

• 1-2 minutes: Author introduces himself or herself and talks a little about his or her books.
• 3-5 minutes: Author reads aloud a short picture book, or a short excerpt from a chapter book/novel
• 5-10  minutes: Author answers a few questions from students about reading/writing
• 1-2 minutes: Author book-talks a couple books he or she loves (but didn’t write!) as recommendations for the kids

If you’re a teacher or librarian and you’d like to have an author Zoom with your classroom or library on World Read Aloud Day, here’s how to do it:

• Check out this list of volunteering authors and illustrators, and visit their websites to see which ones might be a good fit for your students.
• Contact the author directly by using the email provided or clicking on the link to his or her website and finding the contact form. Please be sure to provide the following information in your request:
  • Your name and what grade(s) you work with
  • Your city and time zone (this is important for scheduling!)
  • Possible times to connect on February 2nd. Please note authors’ availability and time zones. Adjust accordingly if yours is different!
  • Your preferred platform (Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, etc.)
  • A phone number where you can be reached on that day in case of technical issues
• Please understand that authors are people, too, and have schedules and personal lives, just like you, so not all authors will be available at all times. It may take a few tries before you find someone whose books and schedule fit with yours!

If you’re a traditionally published author or illustrator who would like to be added to the list, you can fill out this form to sign up.  Once your schedule is full, please send an email via my website contact form, and I’ll remove your name from the list. Please note that due to deadlines and other obligations, it may take up to a week for me to update.

Lately, school and classroom libraries have seen a marked increase in book challenges. These are attempts by parents – sometimes by other adults who have nothing to do with the schools – to remove books they don’t like from circulation so they’re no longer available to readers. ALL readers. Not just their own.

As educators, librarians, and people who care about both books and kids, it is essential that we speak up about this and push back. Our libraries and classroom libraries have a responsibility to serve all of the young readers in our care. Not just kids from one cultural background or religion. Not just kids whose lives have looked the way we want kids’ lives to look. Not just the kids whose parents show up at school board meetings.

All of them.

When we remove books – or fail to order them in the first place, for fear of someone objecting – we’re doing a huge disservice to the readers in our care. We’re making sure that the young reader who’s never seen someone who looks like them on the cover of a novel never will. We’re making sure the reader who lives with an addict or misses a parent who’s incarcerated continues to feel invisible and alone. We’re removing the lifeline that books can provide for kids who are struggling. We’re turning off the light and leaving our readers alone in the dark.

Before I was an author, I was a National Board Certified middle school ELA teacher. I kept a huge variety of MG and YA titles in my 7th grade classroom library, gave regular book talks, and made it my personal mission to find just the right book for every one of my kids, wherever they were in their reading lives. I’d talk with parents and caregivers about this – and about the diversity of my classroom library.

Instead of responding to book challenges with anxiety and fear, it can be helpful to open a dialogue with families before these issues ever come up. It makes sense to talk with parents and caregivers about our libraries and classroom libraries, let them know that we support their right to guide their own children’s reading choices, and explicitly teach them what steps to take if their reader brings home a book that doesn’t work for them.

Here’s a version of the letter I sent home. Teachers & librarians, please free to borrow language if any of it is helpful to you in your own advocacy and outreach to families. Thanks for fighting the good fight and for the essential work you do for kids every day.

Dear Families,

Our school librarian does a phenomenal job making sure that there are books of interest to every student in our building.  That’s a lot of students.  A lot of different students.

Our middle school serves sixth graders as young as ten years old and eighth graders as old as fifteen.  Five years is a big gap, and those are no ordinary five years.  The difference between ten and fifteen is the difference between Legos and smart phones, the difference between trick-or-treating and Homecoming Dances. The difference between child and young adult.

And our kids are not only different ages; they arrive at school with different reading levels, different backgrounds, and different experiences that have shaped their lives in both positive and negative ways. So it makes sense that they have different needs when it comes to reading.

The book that is perfect for your wide-eyed sixth grader isn’t likely to be a good fit for a fifteen-year-old who’s repeating eighth grade.  The book that eighth grader will read and love is probably not one that would be right for your sixth grader right now.  But as teachers and librarians, we have a responsibility to serve all of the kids who come to us. We have a responsibility to offer a wide range of book choices that speak to all of them and meet all of their diverse needs.

Kids, in general, do a fantastic job self-selecting books. When they find they’ve picked up something they’re not ready for, they’re usually quick to put it down and ask for help choosing something else. As teachers and librarians, we’ll offer recommendations and steer kids toward books that are age-appropriate, and we encourage you to talk about books with your kids. We have multiple copies of many titles in our library.  Let us know if you’d like to check out two copies of a book so you can read together.  And if you find that your student has chosen a book that you think might not be the right book for him or her right now, talk about that, too. 

We respect your right to help your own child choose reading material, and we ask that you respect the rights of other parents to do the same.  If you object to your child reading a particular book, send it back to the library, and we’ll help your student find another selection.  We’ll put the first book back on the shelf because even though you don’t feel it’s the right book for your child right now, it may be the perfect book for someone else’s.

Our library will continue to have a wide range of choices for kids – to meet all of their varied needs and help them all develop a love of reading.  If we can ever be of help to you in recommending titles for your family, please don’t hesitate to ask.

LitWorld’s amazing World Read Aloud Day is coming up on February 2, 2022! One of the fun traditions of this day of sharing stories is for authors and illustrators around the world to Zoom into classrooms & libraries for short read-alouds. For a while now, I’ve helped out by compiling a list of author and illustrator volunteers so teachers & librarians can connect with them to schedule virtual read-aloud sessions on that day.

Teachers & librarians: Please hold tight for right now… the list will be coming soon! Sign up for my email newsletter if you’d like to get the link in your in-box when it’s ready!

Authors & Illustrators: Are you a traditionally published* author or illustrator who would like to be listed as a WRAD virtual read-aloud volunteer? Please read the information & follow the directions below…

WRAD VISITS AREN’T LONG OR FANCY PRESENTATIONS. USUALLY, THEY LAST 10-15 MINUTES AND GO SOMETHING LIKE THIS:

• 1-2 minutes: Author gives a quick introduction & talks a little about their books.
• 3-5 minutes: Author reads aloud a short picture book, or a short excerpt from a chapter book/novel
• 5-10 minutes: Author answers a few questions from students about reading/writing
• 1-2 minutes: Author book-talks a couple books they love (but didn’t write!) as recommendations for the kids

Interested in volunteering? If you’re a traditionally published author or illustrator, just fill out this form to sign up! 

*Why traditionally published? Honestly, it’s to limit the size and scope of this list because I’m one person with limited time. However, if someone else would like to compile and share a list of self-published and ebook author/illustrator volunteers, I think that would be absolutely great, and I’ll happily link to it here. Just let me know! 

Good morning, friends! And welcome to our final week of Teachers Write 2021. Today, we’re going to spend some time scribbling about two things – goals and gratitude.

As I write this, some of you are a month away from the start of your new school year – some a little more, and some a little less. And to be honest, there’s still so much uncertainty swirling around the COVID-19 pandemic, our response to it, and what that will mean for you and your students this year. When so much is out of our control, it can help to focus on small things that are within our power, and I hope that’s where this week’s writing will take us.

Let’s head back outside for this one, okay? Take your notebook or laptop and head for the yard or the deck or the porch, or maybe just an open window if that works best. Take some  deep breaths, and then I’d like you to spend five minutes (you can set a timer if you’d like) in response to this prompt:

This school year, I will…

Here’s the catch. Everything you write needs to be within your power. So it’s fine, for example, to write about how you’ll share a picture book with your kids at least once a week. That’s something you can do all by yourself, whether or not you’re meeting readers in person, and you don’t have to rely on other people to make it happen. You can write as many small goals as you’d like, but make sure at least one of them has to do with your own self care. That old rule about putting on your own oxygen mask first, so you have the ability to help others, is relevant in this time we’re all living through. What’s one small, specific thing you can commit to do in order to keep yourself feeling whole and grounded, whatever happens around you this fall?  Maybe it’s ten minutes of morning yoga or a fifteen minute walk at lunchtime. Maybe it’s simply pausing for three deep breaths before you get in the car or set out for the bus each morning. Maybe it’s setting a timer for ten minutes each evening to write something that has nothing to do with your work.

Your second assignment for today is to write a thank you note. Those of you who attended our Authors Happy Hour earlier this month remember Linda Urban sharing a little about her new novel, Almost There and Almost Not. One of my favorite things about this book is how the main character, California, learns to write thank you notes and exercises her newfound gratitude muscles frequently. The letters range from heartfelt to hilarious, but they all manage to find the positive in a tough situation. We can do that, too.

So set another timer now – ten minutes should do it – and write a short thank you note to someone who brightened your day or your week or your trip to the grocery store recently. (The ghost of California’s etiquette-book-authoring aunt would tell you this needs to be hand written, but I’m fine with you typing and emailing if that’s better for you.) You can send this, or it can be just for you. But write it because there’s research – like, actual research – showing that people who express gratitude are happier and healthier. In the study, subjects assigned to write about gratitude reported feeling happier, which might not be terribly surprising. But they also exercised more and had fewer visits to the doctor’s office. Practicing gratitude literally made them healthier people. And that’s an idea worth exploring as you head toward a new school year. You might want to share some thoughts on this at Jen’s last weekly check-in on Thursday.

One quick reminder – this isn’t part of Teachers Write, but for anyone who wants to explore writing picture book biographies in more depth, there’s still space in my virtual writing workshop “Out-of-the-Box Biographies,” which is happening tomorrow with a video replay and handouts available through the end of September.

I hope that for many of you, part of a self-care plan for the coming year will be taking some time each day to work on your own writing. If that’s the case, you may want to revisit some of our writing prompts from past Teachers Write summers. You can find those here.

Finally, I want to wrap up our Summer 2021 session with a big thank you. Thank you for joining us this summer and especially for the work that you did all year, providing a sense of normalcy and hope for the young people you serve. I’m wishing you good health, inspiration, and joy in sharing stories as you head into the new school year.

Keep writing!

All best,
Kate

Good morning, friends! Welcome to Week 4 of Teachers Write. By now, I hope you’ve had a little time to breathe and recharge, and hopefully you’ve been flexing your writing muscles a bit. We’ve been mining memories, finding strength in places and moments from the past. Today we’ll do some reflective writing on more recent history.

So first…let’s talk about primary sources. I’ve heard from so many of you who have been sharing my History Smashers series in your classrooms and libraries. For those who don’t know about these books yet, they’re graphic nonfiction – an engaging blend of text, illustrations, photographs, and comics – aimed at unraveling historical myths and sharing hidden truths. The series launched last summer and we’ve been smashing myths about the Mayflower, Women’s Right to Vote, Pearl Harbor, and the Titanic. Book five in the series, History Smashers: The American Revolution will be out tomorrow!

Just a quick side note… This one might be my favorite in the series so far, and I’d love to sign a personalized copy for your library or classroom. If you’d like one, just order through my local bookstore with a note in the comments about how you’d like it signed, and they’ll ship it out this week!

The research I’ve done for this series has relied heavily on primary sources – the writings of people who lived through those time periods and documented them through diaries, journals, exploration logs, letters, notes, and other documents. Their personal reflections help turn history from a textbook collection of names and dates into a real story, about real people’s lives. Book six in the series, History Smashers: Plagues and Pandemics, comes out in October and covers everything from the Plague of Athens and the Black Death to COVID-19. This one made me think a lot about the sources that future historians will use when they write about the time we’ve been living through this past year and a half. They’ll have our government statistics about case numbers and news articles about the trajectory of the pandemic, of course. But what documents will we leave behind to tell our own stories?

I’m going to ask you to create one of those primary sources today.

This has been a time of lasts and firsts, of moments – small ones and big ones – that we’ll never forget. Some of us said goodbye to loved ones this year, or didn’t get to say goodbye at all. All of us had to reimagine our lives in a million different ways, adapting to a situation that seemed to shift every time we thought we’d found our footing. Much of it passed in a blur with little time to reflect, much less record what was happening. But for today’s prompt, I’d like you to look back at one moment from the past year and a half and capture it in words, with as much detail as you possibly can.

Maybe it’s the moment you left your classroom last spring, not knowing when you’d be back. Or the first time you held a Zoom storytime. Maybe it’s the last time you ate in a restaurant with a dear friend before the world shut down. Or the first time hugged someone you love again, when it finally opened up.

Here are some moments that are glimmering in my memory right now…

Picking up my daughter from college last March, walking the eerily empty streets of Boston while she finished packing and saying goodbye to her friends.

Visiting my father-in-law in memory care, outdoors and masked, in the last months of his life. There was a patio table between us, turned the long way. We sat at one end and he sat at the other, behind a red-carpet style event rope. It looked as if he were giving a press conference.

Playing cornhole with my parents on a sunny June day after months without seeing them. I can hear the thump of those beanbags.

And last night, seeing a musical for the first time in over a year. A community theater production of “Into the Woods,” performed under the Elks Club Pavilion in a tiny small-town park. It poured rain outside, and I sat in my folding chair crying as the baker sang “No More.”

What are your moments? Make a quick list, and then choose one to explore in more detail. Try to capture everything – not just what happened but the smells and sounds of the moment. The insignificant details that probably matter more than you think. The words people said and how they said them. What your heart felt like.

And then, if you’d like, share your moment-writing below, in the comments for this post. In doing that, we’ll be bearing witness to this time we lived through, leaving breadcrumbs for future historians who want to know what all the facts and figures of this pandemic meant to real people, experiencing real moments in their lives while it all played out.

With this week’s writing, we’ll be doing sometime else, too – processing some of those moments for ourselves so that we can recognize where we’ve been and begin to move forward. That’s where our writing will take us next week, our final week of Teachers Write 2021.

As always, don’t forget to visit Jen’s blog for this week’s Thursday check-in if you’d like to connect. I’ll see you next week!