Lobbestael Elementary, Michigan

I had the pleasure of spending my St. Patrick's Day this year at Lobbestael Elementary in Harrison Township, Michigan. I did two assemblies for about 150 students each, broken up into two groups. The first group was Kindergarten, first and second grade. The second group was third, fourth, and fifth grade. We had so much fun!

For the younger kids, I started by talking a little bit about what it's like to be an author and illustrator. I showed them some early work (a book I wrote when I was five years old called Sally the Cardinal) and then read them my picture book, The Fanciest Flower. What a great audience! When it was time for questions, they were very complimentary of my work and excited to talk about their own love of drawing. One of them asked what I used to draw the pictures and they were excited to learn that I drew all the art for my book on an iPad!

Then we did some fun drawing activities. They came up with ideas for their own flowers which I drew as we went along. The Godzilla flower and mermaid flower were a big hit!

One little girl suggested a heart flower, which was adorable and very fun to draw. We decided the petals should each be their own heart. I found out later that she actually went back to the classroom and drew her own version to give to her teacher. So cool!

I finished up by taking some suggestions for new characters that they came up with and I drew those as well. A particular favorite was a chubby, baby basset hound who loves to eat carrots. They were so full of ideas that I didn't have nearly enough time to draw all of them. I encouraged them all to go home and draw their characters and come up with stories for them. I hope they did!

Later, I got some fun pictures from the teachers of students who used my coloring and activity pages! (Which you can find on my Resources page)

Then it was time to present to the older students. (Third, fourth, and fifth graders) It was fun being able to go into greater depth about a career in the arts and the publishing process with them. I showed them some of the different projects I've worked on in the past and they were very impressed by my work with the youtuber, Carter Kench. He had a lot of fans in the audience so I became instantly cooler by association.

I talked about how a book gets made and all of the different people involved like publishers, editors, art directors, cover designers, etc. They were excellent listeners and asked me great questions afterwards like "How do you contact the publisher?" and "How long does it take to get published?" My favorite question I got asked was "Was it easy to make the book?" My honest answer was "No, it wasn't easy but it was really fun."

We talked about story structure a little bit too. I went over the beats of a story and how a character's motivation can drive the plot. Then, we tried our own. Working as one big brain, they gave me suggestions and I drew as we went along. The story was fantastic and super silly! Here it is, as best as I can recall:

Once upon a time, an elderly, billionaire zebra named Mrs. Zebrasaurus Rex lived in a fancy, modern house with her little dog, JimBob. She wanted to get some dog food for JimBob but she couldn't drive and didn't know where the store was. So she gave some money to some squirrels and asked them to go get the dog food for her. But they stole the money to buy a fancy modern house of their own! So, she found a mouse who lived in her house and gave him some money to go get the dog food. But he stole the money to buy cheese! Finally, she decided to try giving some money to JimBob to go get the food himself. They decided they wanted the story to have a happy ending so...it worked! JimBob took himself to the store, bought the food, and came back home to eat. And they all lived happily ever after. The end!

As they left, one of the girls asked me if I was going to turn the story into a real book. I told her I wouldn't, of course. The story belonged to them!

They seemed very inspired and excited to write more themselves, armed with their new story-writing tools. I can't wait to read what they come up with! Thanks for having me, Lobbestael!