Update on The Shoephabet & The Monsterbet

We printed the individual pages of both books large (11×11″) and have them displayed in the Warsaw Performing Arts Center now through August. I’ll be getting a couple groups together to go visit them during the morning hours (it’s inside the high school, so it sounds like you can’t just drop in); stay tuned on my Facebook page if you want to be included in a visit.

These are the illustrator’s original art sketches.

I’m also still open to school visits (I do charge). I love reading my books to younger grades, giving a behind-the-scenes look to upper grades, and even holding a Writer’s Workshop based on my books for middle and high schools. If you know a school in Northern Indiana who might be interested in having a local author come, send them my way! (The same goes for libraries. We have two great library programs themed around my books, and my summer is booking up fast!)

Update on Book #3

Most of my current reading has been poetry. I’ve been reading through classics, obscure poets, modern era, and up-and-coming poets–for both children and adults (more on that in the next post). My educational philosophy contains a lot of memorization, repetition, and copying the great works. So I figure, if I really want to write great rhymes for kids, rhymes that are fun and uplifting, inspiring and long-lasting, then I want to read and read and read great poems with great rhythm and great rhyme. My local librarians have been very helpful in referring me to many works I may not have previously considered (and even collecting them for me when my four children are all waiting to go play in the children’s section; may God bless all librarians everywhere!).

Christina Rossetti is one of my and my children’s favorite poets to read and memorize (White Sheep, Hurt No Living Thing, and Who Has Seen the Wind? to name a few). Isaac Watts, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and oh, I’m forgetting many! are other favorites of ours. Shel Silverstein is next for our list. Here’s a great website and another, if you need a starting point on which poems are worth committing to memory.

My oldest son has tucked several Robert Frost poems inside his heart, so when we found this treasure in our library, we simply had to check it out. AND WHAT A GEM IT IS! The author weaves bits of his poems throughout the narrative, showing the origins of some of Frost’s most well-known poems. It may be one I want to own; it’s that good. You really should check it out… (**affiliate link**)

If you would like to see my books in your local library, would you call/email them? I’m happy to call them myself, but librarians love to hear recommendations from patrons (not authors;)).

 

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