Bringing books to life

One of the greatest joys of being a children's author is seeing and hearing about how schools use your books in their school communities and classrooms.

I recently heard from a school that was reading The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester to kick off a school-wide read-aloud event.

To celebrate, they did art projects that involved frog finger puppets. They also raffled off this great frog:

Raffling off a giant frog

Another school reading the same book (down in my home state of South Carolina) formed a special reading group called The Fantastics.

That same school used The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis as their theme book. They formed a group called Velma's Vocabulary Group.

And one of their teachers dressed up as Velma for the school's Book Character Show.

How great is this!!??

Velma from The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis

And a school in California told me that the kids now use one of Velma's lines as their call to silence and attention:

"I've had it up to HERE!"

See why I write for children?