Visited the small town of Richfield Springs last week, a former tourist destination in the days when a good vacation meant a long soak in the sulphur springs. It was also the onetime home of illustrator Ellen Hattie Clapsaddle, an iconic illustrator of nineteenth-century postcards.
I met some modern-day pirate illustrators at Richmond Springs Central School, where they were celebrating pirate day. We talked about hairy pirates, and I admired their hand-made pirate hats. I have to say, for pirates, they were an exceptionally well-behaved, well-read bunch. They draw really well, too.
Continue reading →I love visiting schools, especially when the trip takes me somewhere I wouldn’t have otherwise ended up. Last week, for example, I found myself in Springfield, Illinois for the IRC convention, just blocks from Abraham Lincoln’s old house:
And just yesterday, driving through Ashland, NY, I passed what appeared to be the Partridge Family bus:
So it’s been a big week. I did a little digging and discovered that, alas, the bus in Ashland is only a replica, but it was impressive nonetheless. In a way, though, I wish I hadn’t looked it up. There was something satisfying about imagining a final, unaired episode of the show in which Mrs. Partridge and Reuben Kincade retire to a sleepy upstate, NY town and happily fade away.
I was on my way down to Roxbury Central Schools, and my visit there was my favorite kind. RCS, a K-12 school, is in a beautiful old WPA building. I presented in the library (which was among the most impressive school libraries I’ve seen) and the kids were absolutely terrific. It makes such a difference when the students are prepared for the visit and really know the books.
But here’s the best part. They put together a “meet the author” dessert reception and scheduled it before lunch. These are people after my own heart, and the cookies were out of this world.
My thanks to everyone at Roxbury (and especially Mrs. Johnson) for a wonderful day.
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This week I was in Hagerstown, MD, visiting four schools. Hagerstown is the birthplace of the Bookmobile, which began began over a hundred years ago and was actually a horse-drawn wagon driven by the library’s custodian.
It was a great week, and the kids were fantastic. At every school they were prepared and pumped for the visit. Even the teachers got into the spirit (check out Mrs. Jordan’s clothes above – a Backbeard-caliber ensemble if ever there was one.)
One of the nicest surprises came on the last day of the visit, at Lincolnshire Elementary. The kids prepared a full-blown production of Bean Thirteen, and it was incredible.
View a video clip from the play
Afterward, they presented me with a quilt made from illustrations the kids drew from scenes in my books. It was an amazing way to end the week. Thanks to everyone in Hagerstown who worked so hard to make this visit a success.
(Click below to see some of the great artwork created by the Hagerstown students.)
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This week, I visited Farnsworth Middle School in Guilderland, where my friend Larry teaches. We’re writing a book together about the reanimated corpse of Benjamin Franklin, and we though this was something the middle school students should know about.
It was great fun. We talked about writing, re-writing, revising, editing, first and second drafts, and trashing it all and starting all over again. Later, while Larry was tending to his classroom duties, I doodled Benjamin Franklinstein on the whiteboard.
Everyone at Farnsworth was very nice, even though they have to work with Larry every day.
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I love living near Albany, but sometimes, the winters can wear me down. When the temperature falls and the days get short, I start to long for warmer climes, like the balmy tropics of southern Canada.
How do they stay warm up there? I can tell you one way. They eat poutine, a dish invented in Quebec in the late 1950’s. It’s made of french fries covered in gravy and topped with cheese curds. It tastes much better than it sounds, and after you eat it you want to sleep until spring.
I was in Quebec to speak at the Eastern States Literacy and Technology Symposium and visit some schools. The kids were great, and everyone made me feel right at home. At Ayer’s Cliff, they built their own version of the wall from Edwin’s clothing shop. (Edwin is the tailor who sells Backbeard his outfit.)
It was a wonderful trip, and my thanks go out to Wendy King for all her work setting up the visit and chauffeuring me all over the place on Thursday. Take it from me, Quebec in February is not to be missed.
I’ll leave you with some terrific artwork from the kids at Ayer’s Cliff…
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For some reason, when the weather gets cold and the days get short, I always end up heading north for school visits. How cold was it? It was so cold the kids at Taylor Elementary, on the icy shore of Lake Ontario, were blowing bubbles outside to watch them freeze before they hit the ground. True story.
I knew it was going to be a good day when I walked in the door and saw that the school was named for a trombone player. Trombonists – as any trombone player will tell you – are among the finest people on earth. I was clearly in good hands.
One thing people up north understand is how to thrive in these frigid conditions. For example, like bears, we humans can benefit from an extra layer of insulation under our skin during winter. To help develop that layer, we all ate this for dessert. As best I can remember, it was M&M’s (my initials) on a Rice Krispies base with butterscotch and peanut butter. It was awesome, and eating it was like putting on thermal underwear.
My thanks to the gang at Taylor for working so hard to make this visit a success. Everyone was so welcoming, the kids were prepped and raring to go, and the walls were jam packed with terrific artwork. On an icy, January day, it was hard to imagine a place I’d rather be.
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Spent the day in Bainbridge yesterday talking to kids and signing books. Mostly signing. Thanks to a generous grant from the Books With Senator Libous program, we smashed my previous one-day record and sold five hundred and ten books. Piled up, they made a stack almost eight feet tall. I signed almost all of them. Later, on the drive home, my arm fell off.
It was a fun visit, especially since we did the presentation in the Bainbridge Town Hall Theater. They bused the kids over from the elementary school and they filled the seats and a good bit of the balcony. It’s a great space, and I felt a little like I was on vaudeville.
My thanks go out to everyone who helped make this visit possible, including Dolores Nabinger, Cathy Sherrick, David Leib, Bev Fox, and Michelle Shirkey and everyone at Greenlawn.
Here’s some terrific artwork by Ms. Paoletti’s Greenlawn art students:
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Hamagrael is one of the closest schools to me, yet it never knew exactly where it was until last Friday. It’s a small, neighborhood school hidden away down a series of side streets. And it has a strange name.
I had always assumed the name was Dutch. (Around Albany, it seems like almost everything has a Dutch name.) But it turns out the story is much stranger: Hamagrael was named to honor the children of the farmer who originally owned the land. It’s Harold plus Mary plus Grace plus Ellen (or Eleanor – there was some debate on this point.)
In any case, Hamagrael really rolled out the red carpet, and even the principal, Mr. K., got into the spirit. My thanks to Ellen Eisenbraun, Joan Martelle, Christine Schade, and the librarian, Mrs. Held, for pulling everything together. It was a really fun day.
I leave you with some terrific pirate drawings from the walls of Hamagrael (click to enlarge).
Continue reading →Visited the Discovery Center in Binghamton, NY on Saturday, but didn’t have time to take any pictures. Luckily, this blogger did. Thanks!
Continue reading →Last night I slept in the library. How cool is that?
I’m speaking in the Old Forge, NY, library today, and they have a small apartment upstairs where authors stay and do writing residencies. (An author living in the library – why hasn’t anyone thought of that before?)
I felt a little like Burgess Meredith in the classic Twilight Zone episode, Time Enough at Last. Thankfully, I didn’t break my glasses.
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