Celebrate the launching of Dying to Go Viral, without having to leave the comfort of your home or classroom, Thursday, June 6, 2013 1:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT Live on: http://www.youtube.com/user/SylviaMcNicoll/feed
Fourteen year old Jade is dying to be noticed by Aiden. He makes videos that go viral. If she removes her helmet and skateboards while hitching onto his Mustang, Aiden promises to put her on youtube. Maybe it’s not the best idea.
In fact, Jade will spend eternity regretting it.
If you or your students send questions in advance by email: sylvia.mcnicoll@cogeco.ca, I will answer them in the broadcast. Authors name your latest book and I will mention it along with your question.
Of course the launch with Mars Bars Squares, fudge,
My favourite thing about TD Canadian Children’s Book week it that I have the opportunity to visit so many different groups of kids in a short time in a part of the country I would likely not get to. Certainly I will visit Nova Scotia for a summer holiday but stepping inside a classroom won’t occur so quickly again. Then there’s that moment when you’re in the thick of a presentation, or perhaps you’re reading aloud from your favourite scene in a book and you look around and there’s this sea of faces raptly paying attention, eyes riveted to you. Love it.
The first school I visited was Bluenose Academy which using my Ontario sensibility meant I should not wear jeans as it would probably be a private school. Lesson learned: in Nova Scotia public schools are often called academies, as was Inverness Centre of Education Academy, later on in the week.
When I’m asked to present to younger students, grade two or three, I worry because my books for this age group are
out of print. At first I handed out copies (gratis) to ensure that once I got the students all excited about the story, they’d be able to read it. A pleasant surprise is the libraries and schools still stocked Project Disaster (Scholastic). In the last school I visited the principal, Joyce Lively, had read the entire story to the whole school.
I love that teamwork, first the Canadian Children’s Book Centre organizes a tour, the coordinator in the province arranges dates with schools who apply, then the educators prepare by gathering the author’s books, borrowing, begging and sometimes buying, and reading to the students. When I step into the library, the literacy circle becomes complete. The author visit works and the kids get wildly excited about the creator, the book and reading. Take that Youtube! The readers will inherit the world.
The metaphor–does a lawyer really look like a crow?
Too many kids fall under some witness program so no full frontal photos.
The special thank you card that makes you think the students really know your book better than you do.
What makes for a really great author visit in the school?
Excitement–from the moment you approach the school you see a welcome poster on the door. The announcements declare your presence. The library displays your books.
The kids in the front row of the auditorium ask you if you’re the author. Maybe they point to one of the books in your stack and say they’ve read it or ask something about the plot or character.
What should a terrific author visit do? Entertain and enlighten–I think it’s important that the kids and I have fun but I’m there to deliver some writing process tips perhaps as much for the teachers as for the students.
“Where do ideas come from?”is the question foremost in my mind when I create my presentation. I try to address this question in as visual a way as possible. I carry around a rubber brain, for example, to show them. I use Power Point to show the brain with a piece of toast in–the brain is a toaster, what you get in,you get out.
But I also know the question really means how does a book get created from start to finish so I include images of my office, some research. I address what I
need to pre plan before my fingers hit the keyboard and call up kids to hold the key plot points. I sometimes feel the teachers want me to say I have an idea file, or that I plan and plot the whole story out but I always make sure to say that different processes work for different authors.
Also rewriting is a topic that educators want addressed but it’s so much different for a professional writer than it is for a student and there’s a fine balance between inspiring and encouraging readers and writers, and telling them how hard the professional job of writing and rewriting is.
S is for the Silver Birch…imagine an acrostic thank you poem. I was a little nervous that my name was just too long.
Aw, and then the personal thank you from the kids. To the left you see my cheerleading squad thanking me with attributes that spell my name. Y was for YA if you’re wondering.
Below is a thank you card that gives a flow chart of all the attributes the readers and teachers have found in my story–some I didn’t really know it had.
You’re welcome guys. It is always a huge pleasure. Inspiring and humbling, and tons of fun. Characters, settings, themes–really? It had all that.
Hurray for grade 8 students (at Jack Chambers Public School) Nishit, Justin And Sumar. They created this dramatic book trailer and they honoured copyright! Thank you to Mrs. Gulliver too for inspiring (or maybe just assigning) her students to look at a book more closely and “talk” about it with other media. For their efforts they have earned an author visit from me for their fellow class mates. I look forward to
My first encounter with seafood was meeting Jessica Scott Kerring, the author of the Lobster Chronicles. I bought great souvenirs such as A Bluenose Twelve Days of Christmas by Bruce Nunn and illustrated by Doretta Groenendyk who I met and Spin to Sea by her daughter Izra Fitch. I met my fellow Arthur Ellis finalist author of Live to Tell, Lisa Harrington and  Lisa Doucet owner of children’s bookstore extraordinary:  Woozles not to mention visited again with Budge Wilson and Carol McDougall.
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