Author school visits build relationships between children and the written word. Meeting authors can inspire children to write and make connections with lessons they are learning in their classrooms.
School visits encourage reading and writing for fun and often motivate reluctant or struggling readers and writers. After an author visit, children often see themselves as real writers and part of a writing community.
A special connection is made when children are able to interact with an author. Children are energized, inspired, touched with a new appreciation for reading and writing.
Authors as readers
Through author visits, students learn that authors are readers, too. Authors share their reading lives, talk about their favorite authors, and make book recommendations. Some of my favorite children’s books include Peggy Parrish – Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia and Tommy DePaola’s Big Anthony, His Story. Discussing our favorite books exposes children to new books. Students become more willing to read different genres and read books that ordinarily they would not think about reading.
Authors as writers
Children like to ask us questions about writing our stories. They enjoy hearing that that we struggle with formulating ideas, editing, and revising. They love to hear that we have trouble accepting criticism. We know our first draft is never a final draft. Children often think that we get it right on the first try. Sharing the number revisions my stories have been through, often amazes children. Some of my best writing takes place during rewriting process. Helping students to see their writing process is similar to the writing process of real authors will help them make some connections between what they are learning in the classroom and life outside the classroom. It is my hope that after sharing my writing stories students will be willing to write more and take more risks with their writing.
We all have stories to tell
We all have stories to tell. Through author visits, students learn that the name on the cover of the book is a real human – a real person who happens to be at their school. Last week a young reader came up to me and pointed to my name on the book and said, “This is you. You wrote this book and here you are in my school.”
We often talk about the importance of students seeing themselves in books. Imagine what this is like for children to seeing themselves in the author standing at the front of the room. Imagine students thinking to themselves that’s what I like to do, that’s what I would like to write, that’s what I can do!
Reflection
Author visits are so much more than an opportunity to sell books. It’s all about the children and how we can help them to become stronger readers and writers. Author visits help foster a life-long love for reading. They bring books to life on a whole new level, and they help students develop a greater appreciation for literature and the written word.
Requests …
I am so glad you’re here and I thank you for taking the time to read this post. I am grateful that I can share my writing journey with you.
I’m looking forward to helping you as a children’s book writer in any way that I can. Speaking of helping — please leave a comment below and let me know what questions you have about picture book writing. This will help me to tailor my posts to your needs.
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I am now booking author visits for 2023. In the past few weeks we have been to 8 schools to share Two Wins for Wiley. The children were very excited for us to visit their school. Please consider an author visit and book early! Concerned about the cost of an author visit? Check out this article, while it is an older article, it is a jumping off point.
One last request …
You can really help this author by leaving a book review on Amazon or Goodreads. You can leave a review for Gertie Saves the Day here or here. Two Wins for Wiley here or here. Reviews can be as easy as 2-3 sentences and should take about 30 seconds to leave and would make a huge difference for me. Need help? Click here.