One of my fondest memories of my early teaching career is
the day I met Rick Riordan. Our school had won the membership contest for
International Reading Association, and our prize was a guest author visit. Rick
Riordan had already written several novels for adults, and his new book, Percy
Jackson and the Lightning Thief, was about to be published!
Now, of course, Percy Jackson is a major series, has been a
motion picture, and is loved by middle schoolers, high schoolers, and adults
everywhere (or many places, anyway).
I believe in authors sharing their writing process with
kids; encouraging them to write and read; discussing the challenges of
revision; sharing where inspiration comes from. Because of this, we try to have
at least one guest author each year to hopefully inspire our students.
Yesterday, we were absolutely blessed to have a lovely
children’s author, Donna Munoz, come and share her writing and her process with
our kids! I sat in on the fifth grade presentation and listened to her story
about being the first person in her family to attend college, overcoming
challenges, and loving her career as a teacher and a writer.
Her book, Harley Farley’s First Halloween, is available on
Amazon in paperback and for the kindle. You can grab it here:
It’s an adorable story about a zombie named Harley Farley
who sleeps in a bunk bed in Eddie’s room at the top of the stairs! Eddie finds
him one Halloween night and decides to take him trick-or-treating. It was
really enlightening for the kids to hear about where the inspiration came from
for certain details in the story; why Eddie’s “plan” looks like a football
playbook, whose idea it was to include fried chicken in the story, and why the
message of acceptance is so important.
Donna wrote the story collaboratively with her three sons
around the dinner table!
An important moment (I always enjoy it) was when Donna
shared her document of the story with edits. Students are always surprised to
see that “real” authors revise. It’s such a valuable lesson to help kids think
about their own writing work.
Donna also shared the first page of her upcoming middle school book,
A Jar Full of Butterflies, a story about two sisters who have to move from
Mexico to Texas and must find themselves here in America. This is a story many
of our children know well from personal experience.
She encouraged our kids to find something they care about
and work through their challenges. What a great message!
Happy Teaching!
I LOVED visiting and can't wait to come back!
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