Adding Value to School Visits with Workshops: in the Spring 2016 SCBWI Bulletin

Thanks to Alexis O'Neill for including me in her article in the Spring 2016 SCBWI Bulletin in the article in her column The Truth About School Visits: Adding Value with Workshops. My cut paper animal workshop is one of eight terrific workshops described by authors Dandi Daley Mackall, Joan Bransfield Graham, Barney Saltzberg, Mary Ann Fraser, Joanne Rocklin, April Halprin Wayland, and Alexis O'Neill that can be done as a supplementary activity when doing author visits at schools.
This is a great resource for authors, illustrators, teachers and librarians!

The Lasting Value of Author Visits

Author Visit at Taft School, Anaheim, CA 1996

You impacted our lives and helped instill the love of reading in my students! That was the subject line of a recent email. I do many author visits in schools every year. I often wonder what the impact of my visit is on my audience. Recently, I received the following letter from a librarian, whose school I visited more than twenty years ago. I was delighted to find out that even today, students and teachers remember my visit. Elizabeth Fisher has graciously agreed to let me share her letter. I hope it will inspire many more author visits at more schools. Meeting a "real live" author is one of the best ways to promote reading and writing and get kids excited about books.

Hello Ms. Arnold,

The year was 1994. I was a first year teacher teaching a combo 5th and 6th grade class at Riverdale Elementary School in Anaheim, Ca. The school was in Orange Unified School District. Riverdale Elementary School has since closed.

Our Librarian had selected you and then enticed you to come to Riverdale Elementary School to be our Author of the Day. Our entire school was excited to be getting you as our guest. 

My students and I researched you. We read every bio we could find about you- normally on the book jackets of your books. We made large posters announcing you would be coming to Riverdale Elementary School. Students made individual posters to place in every classroom. The posters had your picture on it, the books you had written and the date you were coming to our school. Students painted signs welcoming you. They were placed on Riverdale Street for the community to see and they were posted all over our campus. We were excited. YOU were coming to our school!

I purchased every book you had written and my 5th and 6th grade students practiced reading your books. I taught the students how to teach the other classes all about Caroline Arnold the famous author. They learned how read a book to an audience, how to hold the book while reading to students, to share the pictures in the book and to emphasize the words that went with the pictures. Classes (100% of them!) signed up to have my students come to their class to present about you, our visiting author, and to read one of your books to the class. Riverdale Elementary School was pumped! Their favorite author was coming to the school and the students couldn't wait!

Your visit was a HUGE success! We LOVED, LOVED, LOVED you!

Over the years I have ran into teachers and students from Riverdale. Many of them have shared with me the memory of the day of your visit. They remember preparing for your visit and then getting to sit close to you as you read your own book to us.

Such a thrill it was to have your visit back in 1994 and to see it still has impact on their lives today. Oh, the power of a well written book is there, but even more so, the power of an author who takes the time to visit schools! You are amazing!

Elizabeth Fisher
Library Media Specialist
Canyon High School 
Anaheim, CA

Note: I dug in my boxes and found a photo that was published in the LA Times Orange County edition of my author visit to a school in the Orange USD. I thought it was from my visit to Riverdale but, as it turns out, it was taken two years later, in 1996, when I visited Taft School and the Times sent a reporter and photographer to do an article about the author festival. Even though it isn't from my visit to Riverdale, it shows the excitement of kids meeting a real live author at a neighboring school.

Why Author Visits Matter: A Teacher-Librarian's Love Letter. My friend and fellow author Alexis O'Neill contacted Elizabeth and got permission to post her letter on her website School Visit Experts.com. Thanks, Alexis, for spreading the word about the value and importance of author visits!

DO AUTHOR VISITS MAKE A DIFFERENCE? Take the Survey

Have you ever hosted an author visit at a school or been part of a planning committee to bring an author to your community? I know from my own experience that author visits are one of the best ways to promote reading and writing and provide the opportunity for students and teachers to interact with a “real live” author/illustrator such as myself.
My friend Alexis O’Neill, author of The Recess Queen and many other well loved books, has been working on a study to provide statistics and stories to assist teachers and librarians in making a case for bringing authors and illustrators to their schools. But first, she needs to “take the temperature” of anyone who has hosted an author visit at their school or library.
If your answer is yes to the above question, it would be much appreciated if you would take the 2-minute survey at the following link. You responses may help bring more authors into schools and classrooms. http://tinyurl.com/kzjnutv
This study is being sponsored by the Ventura County Reading Association (California) and is the first of its kind. We’re hoping that this can offer helpful insights to schools as well as to published authors and illustrators.
As you may know, since the start of the recession and the No Child Left Behind initiative, teachers and librarians have had to fight harder to convince their administrators to host an author visit. Now that it’s the era of Common Core, will it be the same, worse or better climate for author visits?
Thanks a million for helping to get the word out!

LITERACY: PASSPORT TO THE WORLD, California Reading Association PDI at Sonoma State University

Caroline at the Signing Table

I just got back from the California Reading Association PDI at Sonoma State (November 1-2) where I gave a talk and did a book signing. It was a great event and I met many teachers and librarians--at my session, the signing table, at the author meet and greet, on the exhibit floor, and at the California Young Reader Medal dinner on Saturday night where Alma Flor Ada was the featured speaker.  My talk, Think Outside the Book, focused on links to Common Core and on projects and activities teachers and kids can do in the classroom to reinforce reading and enhance the content of the book.  In my handouts I included links to many projects, most of which can also be found on this blog and on my website.

Caroline with the Heinemann representative

I always enjoy going to CRA.  It was a full program and with so much going on, impossible to attend everything but I did as much as I could.  In the exhibit hall I had the chance to meet the rep for Heinemann, which publishes the Fountas Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention program.  My new book, Octopus, Escape Artist of the Sea, is part of that reading program.

Gretchen Woelfle

I want to thank Nancy Rogers-Zegarra and Lynn Gurnee and all the hardworking CRA committee members for all the organization of the conference.  I also want to thank Sandra Yoon for coordinating the author signing and making the colorful posters for our spots at the signing table.

Patricia Newman, Alexis O'Neill, Marsha Diane Arnold

The program included fifteen other children’s book authors and it is always fun to talk and compare notes.  Coincidentally, three of the other authors Alexis O’Neill, Gretchen Woelfle, and Jeri Ferris were once students in my writing class at UCLA.  Now they are all well known and prolific authors and we are colleagues.

Jeri Ferris

At the CYRM dinner numerous people received awards, including my good friend Jeri Ferris who was honored with the Armin Shulz Literacy Award for promoting social justice in her books.  The first place winners of the CRA student writing contest were invited to the dinner and read their essays aloud.  The youngest of the prize winners, a first grader, concluded his essay: “I like books because reading makes me happy.”  Reading makes me happy too.