Snow, Lakes, & Laser Pointers: An End-of-the-School-Year Update

Between in-person author visits and Skype chats, I visited kids in more than a hundred classrooms all over the country this school year, but now the lake-days are calling. I’ll be taking the next couple of months off from appearances and Skype visits to write, celebrate my son’s graduation, and spend time with family. But I want to say a BIG thank you to all of the schools and libraries that hosted me this year and share some photos from my last two events.

I’d visited Rebecca Buerkett’s students when she worked at Saranac Elementary, so it was a treat to see her again in her new role as librarian of L.P. Quinn Elementary in Tupper Lake, NY.

I love the student art on their bulletin board – the kids used computer graphics to make Over and Under the Lake projects, inspired by my picture book, OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW.

Before my presentations began, I got to have a smaller Q and A session with this second grade class that had read many of my books. They were great readers – and writers, too! They surprised me with a book of description-riddles.

Some of Rebecca’s older students had read my novel THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. and taken the “What Tree Would You Be” quiz in the back of the book, so they came to my presentation wearing their tree name tags!

My last school visit of the year was an informal trip to Cumberland Head Elementary to see the OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW inspired research projects that Gayle Roy Collin’s third graders made. Here are the kids with their projects (and one photo-bombing author!)

Other news this week…some books arrived in the mail!

I received author copies for MANHUNT, the third book in my Silver Jaguar Society Mysteries with Scholastic and two new versions of OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW from my editor at Chronicle – the paperback, which comes out this fall, and the Korean edition!

I also made it through some of the paper mail on my desk this week, which is always fun, thanks to the letters from kids. I loved one particularly artistic thank you note from a student whose school I visited. It’s great to know that my laser pointer makes such an impression.

Most of my summer blogging will be related to Teachers Write, the online summer writing camp I run for teachers and librarians, but I’ll probably sneak in the occasional Lake Champlain rainbow and Adirondack hiking photos, too. In the mean time, I hope your summer gets off to a wonderful start!