"If I were a color I would be blue like the sky": LA'S BEST YOUNG WRITER'S PROGRAM

Coloring Wiggle and Waggle at LA's Best Young Writer's Program

“If I were a color I would be blue like the sky.” 

“If I were an animal I would be fast as a cheetah.”

When I recently visited the LA’s Best Young Writers at Anatola Elementary School I found these were some of the things they had written in their idea books.  I loved the fact that the students (grades 1-5) were learning comparisons and personifications.  Their idea books are preparation for their final project which will be books beginning “I Am...”as in "I am a dancer", "I am a good friend", "I am a brother". Each one will be personal and unique.
As I always do when I visit young writers, I gave a presentation of how I work as a writer and how I get ideas from my own life, just as they do .  Afterward, while I read my book Wiggle and Waggle, the children colored drawings of Wiggle and Waggle working in the garden. (Wiggle has googly eyes and Waggle wears glasses.)  I am always amazed when I do this project that even though all the children start with the same picture, each one turns out to be different and individual.
LA’s Best is an after school program in the Los Angeles Schools.  Author visits to the Young Writer’s workshops are sponsored by California Readers.