As I was getting everything ready on Tuesday morning, I got a text from my sister-in-law Patrice saying she hoped it was alright that she invited the three other kindergarten classes to join in the presentations. I knew it might get a little crazy, but how could you turn down a room full of 5-6 year olds?
My four-year-old daughter really wanted to come with me and I thought it would be a great time to spend some quality time with my cute girl. So we packed up some Cheerios and an apple and we were on our way.
We drove and drove until we got to the edge of the wilderness. Then we drove a little more until we made it to Eagle Mountain. We found Patrice's classroom and got everything set up for the presentation. Then the kids from the other classes started coming in. And they kept coming and coming and coming! I knew it was going to be an adventure.
I started off by introducing myself. I wish you could have seen their faces when I told them that I work at a candy factory. I think I could have spent the entire time talking about that and they would have been completely satisfied. I then talked about the creative process (gathering ideas, creating, perfecting and publishing) and how I use it to write my books. I showed one of my sketch books and my Wacom tablet that I use to illustrate on the computer. One of the teachers told me later that she had a student tell her, "we need to get one of those!"
I then read to them my books. This was the first time that I have had this experience, besides reading them to my own children. It was so much fun to see their faces and hear them laugh at all the right places. That experience was priceless.
To finish off the presentation, I opened it up for questions. Kindergarteners are still learning the art of asking questions, which made this very interesting. Here are some of the questions I was asked:
"How do you think of your ideas for the books?"
"How do you get your book to the people who print it?"
"Why do you want to write books?"
"How do they print the hard part of the cover?"
"How do you think of the title of your books?"
Some questions weren't quite questions. For example, some said:
"I like to draw pictures."
"I like to write books."
"I love you!"
We finished up the questions and the other classes went back to their rooms. It was time for morning class to be over, so the kids gathered their things and were on their way. After a short lunch break, we did it again for the afternoon class. What an experience! I'm not sure where Patrice gets her energy to do that all day long, 5 days a week.
We then took the short drive down the road to Sara's second grade class. I couldn't believe the difference between kindergarten and second grade! These kids were complete angels (not that the kindergartener's weren't good kids, just their attention spans were a little different). Sara had me sit in her reading chair to do the presentation. They just sat with big eyes and listened to everything I had to say.
They asked really good questions, which was a lot of fun. Here were some of them:
"How do you sell your books?"
"Do you like everything that you write?"
"What is the next book that you are writing?"
"What did you want to be when you were little?"
"How did you make the cover?"
What a great day this was! It was definitely motivation to keep going with this. This is really what it's all about. Patrice had one of her students tell her after the presentation, "I want to be a real author when I grow up!" What do I say to that? Well so do I, kid. So do I.
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