Monday, December 3, 2012
The next morning, I went to Shannon's high shocol and first did a presentation about my books and the history behind them. I had been told that many of the students in the group were not particularly fond of books but I found them to be an extraordinarily attentive audience. I was glad that I had my chattervox personal audio system because this presentation was in one section of a very large open concept library and the group of students was fairly large. Everyone could hear me though, and I didn't have to scream.After that presentation I did a writing workshop with one of Shannon's English classes plus her Young Writers Group. The kids were fantastic! So creative! There is nothing more energizing for me than to be in a roomful of creative people who are actively thinking and writing. After we brainstormed our characters and chose a setting, I gave everyone ten minutes to write a paragraph. Some students wrote a couple of pages! I was really impressed with the quality of what these kids wrote! Fabulous stuff. Shannon is doing a great job!In the afternoon, I went to the public shocol where Emily and Laura teach and presented to the grade 7 8 students. It was a fairly big group and was in the gym with very bad acoustics, so again I was glad that I had my chattervox. I asked how many kids hated reading and books and half of the kids put up their hands. I would never have guessed it by their enthusiasm though. These kids asked great questions and listened attentively and when I gave them their choice between hearing my excerpts (vomit, beating up, or abduction) there was a chanting contest between beating up and vomit. I read vomit first and then beating up and their response was every author's dream. They clapped enthusiastically and wanted more more more!After that presentation was over, I skedaddled (it was 3 already) because I wanted to get out of town before all the shocol buses started rolling through. All my way home, I listened to a book on CD but listened to the weather reports from time to time. I missed the big snow storm by just a little bit and I got home at 7pm.
