West Maple and Greenfield Elementary, Birmingham Michigan

This week, I had the absolute pleasure of visiting two schools in Birmingham, Michigan; my old district!

West Maple was up first on Monday. I gave two presentations to about 250 students each. The first group I spoke to was made up of kindergarten, first-, and second-graders. The next was third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders. What a fun bunch!

Group 1 was absolutely full of energy. We came up with all kinds of silly flowers and characters. Group 2 was extremely kind when we experienced technical difficulties and I had to briefly switch from reading my book via PowerPoint to analog. Even in front of kids, I tend to panic when things go wrong. I was touched when they rushed to encourage me from the crowd, saying things like, “It’s okay—these things happen!”

I was also blown away by the thoughtfulness of their questions. One boy asked me, “How has your art evolved over the years?” This gave me a wonderful opportunity to talk about how, like many artists, I spent years trying to achieve realism in my drawings before realizing that I actually preferred my work to be more stylized, expressive, and silly.

I also presented to two groups at Greenfield Elementary. The first was kindergarten, and the second was first grade. Both groups were great listeners and had excellent questions about the physical assembly process of a book. I love talking to kids about how books are made because they interact with them every day and may have wondered about it before. When I explained that a book cover is basically just cardboard and knocked on the cover of my own book, they all wanted to do the same. They passed the book around, knocking on the cover and studying it with a new understanding. So fun to see!

This was such a rewarding experience. I loved being able to say, “I am from the same town as all of you. I went to a school just like this, right down the road, and any of you could be writers or illustrators when you grow up, too.” I hope it inspired some of them!