National Day on Writing

Today is the National Day On Writing. The iniatiative, sponsored by NCTE,  celebrates the importance of writing in our lives and draws attention to the remarkable variety of writing we engage in. What better day to feature Pat's recent book Zing! Seven Creativity Practices for Educators and Students. In addition to writing about creativity in the form of letters to teachers, Pat talks about her writing process and offers numerous writing prompts and explorations for educators.

Here's a writing prompt from page 96 in Zing! (Corwin, 2010):

" Write a letter to yourself from a place you've visited, focusing on what was different from your daily life and how you felt about that difference."

Creativity Interview: Sylvia Vardell

Although April is National Poetry Month, poetry lovers relish poetry throughout the year. A lovely woman who’s a poetry lover and an extremely effective poetry advocate is my friend Sylvia Vardell. Not only does she write inventive books with ideas for sharing poetry, she proposes sessions and conferences to build an audience for poetry. Sylvia is awesome!

SV: What a thrill to be invited to participate in this creativity focus. Thank you!

Am I correct that you invented a poetry tag on-line? How do you create such imaginative projects to excite others about poetry?
SV: Yes, the idea of “Poetry Tag” was mine. I enjoy approaching learning from a “game-like” point of view because I know that children learn from play and I see no reason to stop playing just because we grow up! I try to think of new ways to approach old things and keep it fun and participatory. That’s one of the things I love about poetry, in particular, it is naturally participatory.

Do you speak more than one language and if yes, has that affected your interest in words?
SV: Yes, my parents were German immigrants and my first language was German. We learned English together. I do think this has tuned my ear to be more aware of words and how they sound—which has translated into a real delight in the aural qualities of poetry.

What sessions are you chairing this fall that connect educators to poetry?
SV: I love doing conference presentations, particularly about poetry which lends itself to ORAL presentations, it is a great way to showcase poets (who are not always invited to the party), and injects some variety into the conference docket. I have three coming up in November. First, I’m sharing poetry selections from our university “Librarians’ Choices” project of best 100 books every year. That will be alongside two of my doctoral students and will be at a local conference of early childhood educators.

Then, I’ll be at the biennial YALSA (Young Adult Library Service Association) symposium in Albuquerque with a wonderful panel of poets that includes Jen Bryant, Ann Burg, Margarita Engle, Betsy Franco, Pat Mora (!), and April Halprin Wayland. We’re trying something different for this audience of teen services librarians—I’ve planned a series of “interview” questions that poets will answer (like “If you were to pair your poetry with music, what music would you choose?”) and then we’ll have time for a “Poetry Improv” exercise where the poets will share poems in response to prompts (i.e., “No one “gets” me” or “My current Facebook status”). It should be fun!

Finally, I have a session at NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) in Orlando along with two fellow poetry bloggers (Tricia Stohr-Hunt and Elaine Magliaro) and 4 poets: Lee Bennett Hopkins, Pat Mora (!), Jame Richards (her FIRST time!), and Marilyn Singer. We three bloggers will be featuring the poets on our blogs for 2 weeks before the conference, inviting reader participation. Then we’ll share the results as well as other strategies for using technology to connect kids with poets and poetry. Finally, we’ll share the conference highlights on our blogs afterward, as well. It’s a new model for conference presentations that I’m excited about and extends the conference for people who can’t be there.

I do think of myself as a creative person, although oddly enough I have no aspirations to write poetry myself. I see my writing ABOUT poetry and my teaching and presentations as legitimate creative acts, too. I like making things— books, blogs-- but to the outside world they may seem like practical products, rather than creative objects. Either way, I love doing it—and that’s the key, right?!

 

Sylvia is a Professor at Texas Woman's University, an author of professional books on poetry and children's literature, and co-editor of Bookbird, the journal of international children's literature. She blogs at Poetry for Children.

This Month's Día Dynamo is Lucia Gonzalez!

I feel so fortunate to be working on Día’s 15th Anniversary plans with my friend Lucia Gonzalez during her year as REFORMA’s President. As you’ll read in her interview, Lucia has been a Día champion for years. She’s not only a wonderful advocate but also a fine storyteller and author.

I. When and how did you become interested in sharing bookjoy?

LG: I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing bookjoy in all the story-hours, family programs, book-talks, and literacy programs I’ve presented in libraries everywhere throughout my career as children’s librarian. I was a children’s librarian at the Hispanic Branch Library of the Miami Dade Public Library System when I hosted my first Día de los niños celebration in 1998. Since then, I’ve never stopped celebrating Día or helping others celebrate Día and share bookjoy. I also share bookjoy through the books I write.

2.How did you first learn about Día and what has been your experience with Día?
LG: I heard about Día through my friend and colleague Oralia Garza de Cortes during the Annual Conference of ALA in 1997. I haven’t stopped celebrating since that year. It has been very gratifying to see Día grow to a national initiative supported by librarians across the nation. In 2003, while working as Youth Services Coordinator for Broward County Libraries, I was able to establish Día as a system-wide, month-long celebration that culminated with a Children’s Reading Festival at the Main Library and three other Regional libraries in the County. Since then, Broward County Libraries continue to celebrate Día each year. In 2007 our celebration was honored with the Mora Award. That year the event was supported with a mini-grant awarded by the Association of Library Services to Children (ALSC) and Target. Our library system gave away some 3,000 free books.

3.What are your hopes for Día 2011, Día’s 15th Anniversary?
LG: I am lucky to have the honor of serving as REFORMA President during a year of great celebrations when we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of REFORMA. We will have a great Día celebratory program at ALA Annual in New Orleans in June 2011 and at the Fourth REFORMA National Conference (RNC IV) in Denver, Colorado, September 15-18.

4. What helpful tip(s) do you have for those organizing a Día event for the first time?
LG: Celebrating Día is a community event that requires reaching out to as many community groups as possible. A way to guarantee the involvement of parents is to invite the children to present. This can be coordinated with the support of local schools, or by organizing a talent show where children tell stories, do magic shows, dress up in their favorite book character costume, etc. If the children are directly engaged, the parent will come. The top administration of the library, city officials, and prominent members of the community also need to be engaged. Let them know what Día is about and they will support the organizer’s efforts.

Lucia Gonzalez telling stories

5.What is your favorite example of Bookjoy as either a child or an adult?
LG: As a child, I read to my best friend, mi amiguito Jose Manuel, from the only book I owned, a pop-up book Puss in Boots (El gato con botas). My friend was asthmatic and whenever he stayed sick in bed, I went to his house with my book to read it to him and enjoy the magical and luxurious illustrations. When I left Cuba, I gave the book to him to keep it until I came back. Many years passed before I returned to Cuba. We were 26 years old when we saw each other again. He went to see me as soon as he found out I was back and gave me a very special gift, our beautiful book. He kept it all those years, wrapped in cellophane paper, waiting for my return.

As an adult, my greatest bookjoy has been reading to my two children, Anna and Jose Antonio. We cherish all the moments we spent reading together. Now that they are grown, the characters from those stories are part of our lives, common friends.

6. What are you reading now?
LG: I am reading a very beautiful book, a fictional work, about the childhood years of my favorite poet, Pablo Neruda, written by Pam Muñoz Ryan. The dialog and the scenes are very poetic.  I am enjoying it thoroughly.

Pat’s September Travel: El Paso & DC

Much as I enjoy the quiet necessary for writing, I also cherish the energy from wonderful audiences of all ages. I’ve savored public speaking since I was a little girl as did my mom who was my first editor and my first speech coach. Lucky me.

This month I returned to my home city of El Paso, Texas, and visited its two higher ed institutions. Years ago I taught at both. I was also an administrator at UT El Paso where recently I had the pleasure of speaking to many future English educators. Some were studying ZING!, some DIZZY, and some were reading HOUSE OF HOUSES. Both of my degrees are from this institution, so you can imagine how gratifying it was to discuss my books, writing process and creativity with present-day students. I also received a Literary Legacy Award from the El Paso Community College and attended their literacy celebration. I thought children would enjoy seeing me with this clown.

How honored I was to speak for a third time at the National Book Festival in DC. Like any reader, I was thrilled to see and meet writers I so admire. Once the Library of Congress posts the video of my presentation, we’ll post it on my site. I’m grateful to the LOC staff for all their hard work. A special time was being interviewed at the media tent by some students from Virginia and Delaware. Aren’t students special?

Creativity Interview: Diane Stanley

What a pleasure to introduce my talented Santa Fe friend Diane Stanley who generously agreed to share her reflections on creativity.  Do visit her new website and do enjoy her new book Saving Sky.

An Introduction
DS: I’m an author and illustrator of children’s books. I’ve been exploring ideas in words and pictures for over thirty years. My newest book, a middle-grade novel called SAVING SKY, is my fifty-first. 





1. Do you think of yourself as creative?
DS: Yes and no. I’m very much the product of two quite different parents and those differences work in tandem in my personality.

My mother came from a long line of extremely creative people. They were always telling stories, making art, and doing craftsy things. Mostly they did these things for their own pleasure, but my mother was a professional writer and a veritable idea factory. After her death I remember going through the papers in her office, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. I found file after file of ideas for books, magazine articles, projects. Mostly they never got off the ground—she was probably too busy coming up with even more new ideas to put any of them into action. I draw from Mother’s line of creativity, but I’m not wildly inventive as she was. I have to work at it.

My father, on the other hand, was a math major, a navy pilot, a careful, precise, orderly person. Like him, I’m meticulous, methodical, and tidy.

Those two sides of my nature have proved to be a good mix—more creative than my father, more diligent than my mother, I combine inventiveness with craft. My orderly life enables me to act on ideas when they come to me.

2. How do you nurture your creativity?
DS: As I said earlier, I work at it. If I’m writing a novel, I spend a lot of time actively thinking about my characters, about what’s going to happen in the next chapter, about the overarching theme of the book. I think about these things as I lie in bed at night drifting off to sleep, or while I’m driving, or taking a shower.

I actively seek new ideas from the world around me—newspaper articles, radio interviews, personal stories can all spark something in my imagination. Anything that strikes me as interesting is run through a mental filter: can I use this in a book?

I do a lot of research, looking for rich and wonderful details that will make my settings and backgrounds more accurate and interesting. But I find inspiration there, too. A description I read of how very public death was in the Middle Ages, particularly for great personages, led to a chapter in THE SILVER BOWL: The king is brought into the great hall, carried in on a litter by his gentlemen. All the people “in his hand” have been called there, so that he can say his farewells to them, and acknowledge his heir, and say his last words to his lady wife, and urge his knights to swear an oath of peace. The image of that vast room, with tapestries hanging on the stone walls, a vaulted ceiling overhead, dimly lit by torches and candles, filled with anxious people, still rumpled from having been awakened in the night—all of that came to me from some fairly dry description of medieval customs.

3. What are your challenges in your creativity practices?
DS: My greatest challenge is carving out the time for deep concentration. It’s not that I procrastinate or have trouble finding motivation. I feel drawn to my office and my work. Often I go in and sit down at my computer in the morning—just for a little while—and at ten or eleven I’m still there, in my robe and slippers, working. If I wake early, 5:30 or 6:00, I don’t continue to lie there, hoping to drift off again. I get up and savor some quiet writing time while the sky slowly brightens.

But there are all these other things that tend to get in the way.

My mental image of a normal day, my intention, is to be at my desk, showered and dressed, by 8:30 or 9:00. I work, stopping only for a quick lunch, pretty much all day. At 5:30 or 6:00 I’m finished for the day and go into the kitchen to start dinner. This “normal day” rarely happens, of course. There are the dental appointments, haircuts, grocery store runs. There’s the email and the phone calls.

Writers also have to promote their books—visiting schools, giving interviews, writing articles, posting on social media, filling out questionnaires for the marketing department, updating web sites, blogging. All those things are work-related, but they aren’t the real work itself.

These distractions chop up the day, interrupting the flow of ideas and concentration. I am hardly alone in this. I suspect all authors and artists struggle with it. If they’re wise, they probably ignore the emails, let the answering machine take the call, put a sign on the door saying not to interrupt unless bombs are falling or blood is flowing. I’ve never been able to do that.

4. Do you have a space that helps you be more creative?
DS: Yes. My beautiful office, with windows overlooking my garden, a wooded hillside filled with piñon and ponderosa pines, and beyond that, in the far distance, the Sandia Mountains. My children are grown, so when my husband leaves for work it’s quiet and peaceful in the house. My room is all set up as a refuge for me, with a comfortable chair, a nice big computer screen, art and books all around me. I sit in there with endless cups of tea, soaking in the silence, thinking and writing.

"Just one of many scenes around Santa Fe that feed my spirit.  Living in a beautiful place, feeling close to nature, enriches my creativity, too."

5. In what ways does creativity shape your work and your life?
DS: It’s essential to my life. There have been times when I’ve wished I had more time for my other interests—hiking, traveling, skiing, gardening, reading—and looked around at my friends, many of whom are retired, and wondered . . . But I know I could never retire. I could no more stop creating than I could give up eating and sleeping. It’s part of who I am. It’s possible that if I’d started down a different path in my life, never becoming a published author, never forming the habit of daily creative work, I wouldn’t have missed it. I’d have found outlets for my creativity through other things, as my aunt and grandmother did. But once the natural impulse to create becomes your profession, something you sit down and actively do every day, there’s no turning back. It becomes like a seed that is planted and nurtured, fed and watered and given a sunny spot in the garden: it will grow and grow; winter might knock it back, but in the spring fresh green shoots will start pushing up under the snow. Creativity is for life.

15 Día Nuggets: #1 A Día Checklist

If you visit this blog or my web site, you know that April 2011, we’re celebrating Día’s 15th Anniversary. My web team and I were so pleased at comments about our first Díapalooza last April that we’re having a second Díapalooza in 2011. To assist those of you planning Día celebrations at your schools, libraries, etc., we’ve created a Planning Checklist that we hope will be useful whether this is your first or tenth celebration. This list is the first Día Nugget, 15 lists of 15 ideas. We’ll post the Nuggets on this blog periodically and archive them on my site as we do the Día Dynamos. During Díapalooza, we’ll showcase the 15 Día Dynamos, 15 Mora Award winners and the 15 Día Nuggets, etc. Send us your I-días!

PLANNING CHECKLIST FOR DÍA CELEBRATION

Thanks for joining Día’s National Community & sharing bookjoy!

¨      1. September-November  Form diverse partnerships.  Create a Día committee that includes librarians, teachers, parents, local literacy programs, non-profits, and funders.  Also, consider faith communities, university students, media contacts, summer reading club coordinators, bookstores, etc. 

¨      2. Clarify goals and plan your Día event(s) with your committee.  Select dates(s) and form sub-committees such as fundraising, activities/speakers/programs, media & publicity, volunteers, etc.  Design many creative literacy-related activities.

¨      3. Establish your budget, contact possible funders and partners and begin to plan your fundraising events.   Research available grants and file applications.

¨      4. Review your book collections and evaluate for diversity.  Compile a wish list and order what you can.  Explore options for book donations.

¨      5. Finalize locations and reserve rooms.

¨      6. January-March  Finalize program, speakers, performers, class performances, and special guests such as local officials and celebrities.  Prepare speaker/author contracts and make travel arrangements.

¨      7.Outline the publicity and media campaign including available social media outlets, PSAs, etc.   Remember to post your Día events at www.ala.org/dia.

¨      8. Order promotional items, books for giveaways, and craft supplies.   Also, order food and refreshments.

¨      9. Confirm attendance by leaders of the site for the celebration—building directors, principals, etc.  Since a Día goal is to connect with new and familiar families, it’s important for leaders to show their commitment by greeting attendees.  Include a Summer Reading Coordinator to explain when, how and why to sign up. Remind all speakers to multi-generational audiences to be brief.

¨      10. Recruit and train volunteers.  Design evaluations if desired.

¨      11. April 1. Decorate library and other venues for April celebrations. Construct signage, multi-language if appropriate. Design and create book displays.

¨      12. Enjoy your program(s) and document the event(s).

¨      13. Remind attendees that Día is a yearlong family literacy initiative (día por día/day by day) with annual, culminating family celebrations in April.

¨      14. Thank your partners and hold a de-briefing session.

¨      15. Volunteer to present Día programs and share successful ideas locally, regionally, and nationally.

Before beginning your Día planning, familiarize yourself with the many planning materials and resource information on the following websites:

Pat Mora’s site -- http://www.patmora.com/dia.htm
ALSC/Día site -- http://www.ala.org/dia
Texas Día site -- http://www.texasdia.org/toolkit.html
California Día site -- http://www.diacalifornia.org/tool_kit.html
You can also attend regional Día training if provided or organize a training session with the state library youth services coordinator.

GOOD LUCK! Pat Mora

Click here to download a pdf of the Día checklist.

National Book Festival

The 10th annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will be held on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Pat is one of over seventy featured authors at this celebration of  the joy of reading for all ages. Listen to a podcast Matt Raymond from the Library of Congress talking with Pat about her childhood reading, writing process and a new book she's writing with her daughter.

This Month's Día Dynamo!

I have good memories of visiting NC schools in 2004 thanks to the Novello Book Festival sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. When I returned to Novello in 2007, I had the pleasure of meeting gracious Meryle Leonard. Meryle quickly took an interest in Día and has been a champion ready to strengthen the celebration in Charlotte and also ready to share her ideas and commitment locally and in her region. Thanks, Meryle!

Meryle Leonard, Outreach Manager

I. When and how did you become interested in sharing bookjoy?

My interest in bookjoy began when I received an invitation to view the site from Pat Mora. I found it a wonderful resource to get information, resources and activities to celebrate Dia all year long.

2. How did you first learn about Día and what has been your experience with Día? When I returned to work at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library almost four years ago, I learned about the wonderful Dia celebration the library had been hosting for the past six years. I was lucky enough to be in the department that hosted the Dia activities. My goal was to bring in an author for the event to connect the literacy aspect of Dia with the celebration. Lulu Delacre, Yuyi Morales, Arthur Dorres and Keizo Kasza enhanced our celebration with school visits and parent/teacher workshops.

3. What are your hopes for Día 2011, Día’s 15th Anniversary? Like most library systems, we are facing financial challenges. With that said, I hope that we can continue our Dia celebration, with limited resources and continue to expand our celebration to all children and all cultures. Dia for our library system means, “Diversity in Action!”

Día 2010

Día 2010

4. What helpful tip(s) do you have for those organizing a Día event for the first time? Start planning for your April Dia celebration in September and collaborate with other community agencies to expand resources and reach all populations in your community.

5. What is your favorite example of Bookjoy as either a child or an adult?
As a child, I enjoyed listening to my mother read fairytales to my older brother and me. She read the classic versions, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. I enjoyed the suspense and I enjoyed being frightened. Most of all, I loved the happily ever after endings. My mother died when I was six, but I still have the fairytale book she read from and I share this “bookjoy” with my children. I still cannot read The Little Match Girl, without crying.

6. What are you reading now? I just finished reading, “More Church Folk” by Michele Andrea Bowen. The author is visiting our library next week and I cannot wait to participate in the book discussion.

Landscape Inspires Color and More

What an amazing sight this week: the full moon. Like gazing at the wide Southwest desert landscape, the full moon reminds me how small we humans and our endless squabbles are on this earth.

My web team and I have been making some changes to the look of this blog lately. I chose some colors that say Santa Fe to me: clay shade of adobe, the word meaning brick in Arabic, turquoise often mined in New Mexico, popular in jewelry here, and hints of green, seldom the dominant color in the desert.

Each month, under the cover of ZING!, my new book on creativity, I’ll post a quote from the book. I certainly had some wonderful teachers in my home city of El Paso. Did you also have some memorable educators? I went to Catholic schools from kindergarten until I graduated from high school. In those days, the Sisters of Loretto still wore long, black habits. I remember my kindergarten teacher, Sister Margaret Ann who loved licorice as do I. To discourage her from eating it, Sister’s mother told her that it was made by cooking all kinds of candies together into a black goo. Licorice: yum! Sweet memories: yum.

Pat Talks about Bilingual and Multicultural Publishing

In 2009, Pat was interviewed for a planned update of the Texas Library Association (TLA) Día site. As part of the interview, Pat was asked the question: What is your hope for the growth of bilingual and multicultural books for children and teens?

"I’m a bit uncomfortable with the word “multicultural” which is usually used to mean work by non-Anglo authors. All books are cultural in that they are written by a particular person who is part of a culture, a way of seeing the world. I’ve been having the same problem with the word “mainstream.” What does that really mean? Given our national plurality, the true mainstream is diverse. So what are most of the books published and reviewed and honored? A protected stream? To change metaphors, America’s authentic chorus is diverse. Why all those voices are not fairly represented in the award system and published is a fascinating question.

I can feel mighty discouraged when I read the statistics that document the growth of diversity in the student population and the lack of growth in the diversity of the authors who are published for children and young adults. I’ve written about this topic for years and stressed the importance of diversifying the editorial and marketing staffs, particularly at major publishing houses, and the need for teachers and librarians to be vocal and effective advocates for the books their students deserve, books that reflect the students’ lives and stories. Though educators say they like and need bilingual books, publishers often say that the books don’t really sell. I begin with two assumptions. Publishing is a business. If an editor publishes books that don’t sell, that editor is in trouble. Since most people are people of good will, I’ve often suggested that conference panels with editors and librarians/teachers exploring this challenge could be helpful.

In the last year, I’ve become more aware that bilingual books can be intimidating to monolingual librarians and teachers. An interesting challenge for TLA, given its commitment to Día and family literacy, is how to assist librarians to develop strategies for using bilingual books with all students."

Read the full interview about Día, programming for teens, and reading here.

This Month's Día Dynamo!

This month Pat honors librarian Elva Garza for her faithful support of Día since its beginnings. Elva has advocated for Día on local, state and national levels, has planned celebrations, and has participated in conference programs that educate others and extend Día's reach.

1. Tell us about your path to librarianship and your work in libraries.

"I had never thought about being a librarian until I got a job my sophomore year of college as a work-study student in the reference department at Southwest Texas State University. I was amazed at how the librarians could find the answer to any questions that came across the reference desk and I wanted to be able to do that. I went off to library school at the University of North Texas with every intention of being an academic librarian but got my first job working for San Antonio Public as a reference librarian. After 5 years, I came to work for the Austin Public Library as a Branch Manager and I am currently working as a Regional Branch Manager overseeing five branches."

"In Austin, I have always worked in communities where visiting a library for enjoyment is not necessarily something families do, so it has been my job and the staff I work with to introduce families to what libraries have to offer them. Día de los Niños/Día de los Libros celebration has been one of the programs we have used to do this."

2. What to you is the biggest reward of being involved with Día?
"I think my biggest reward from being involved with Día has been the friendships and partnerships that I have seen develop over the years. These partnerships have brought new learning opportunities for the families we serve all year round. One of these programs has been the Family Learning Nights held in schools throughout Austin. Several of our Día partners get together to provide literacy based activities for families learning math, reading, or science skills. Families receive free books along with library cards."

3. What ideas do you have for Día 2011 and what are your hopes for the 15th Anniversary celebration?
"From [a small event in a church] we have grown to a citywide event where we had as many as 6,000 attend one year. We are just beginning the planning for this year’s Día celebration. We are talking about a month long celebration with events going on in our schools and libraries."

4. What are you reading now?
"I am currently reading The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. I have a ten-year-old buddy and this was his pick. He is a reluctant reader so when ever he asks me to read something with him I jump up and read."

5. What is your favorite example of Bookjoy either as a child or as adult?
"I was never a big reader as a kid; it was not until in college when I first discovered books written by Latino authors that I felt an excitement in reading. When I first read books by Tomás Rivera, Rudolfo Anaya, and Gabriel García Márquez, I was recognizing my family’s stories. These were the stories I heard from my grandfather and father -- the stories of the curandera, of living in a migrant camp and working in the fields, of brothers going off to war."

Children as Creators

What are you reading these days? I’ve been savoring some mighty special books made for me by the third graders at Hoffer Elementary School in Banning, California. Last March, I had the honor and pleasure of speaking at the Charlotte S. Huck Literature Festival in Redlands. It felt grand to leave cold Santa Fe and thaw out in sunny California. The organizing committee was warm and welcoming, my fellow speakers interesting and informative, and my sweet “angel” for the weekend, student Sarah Fiske-Phillips cheerfully escorted me to each event.

A highlight of my visit was meeting with those third graders though. Not only were they attentive and enthusiastic, they brought me gifts! In honor of my first children’s book, A Birthday Basket for Tía, they presented me with a large book they’d made titled, “An Author Basket for Pat Mora.” How I enjoy turning the pages and seeing the writing, art work and photos the students created after reading some of my books.

These talented students also made character sketch posters, a book of “thanks” inspired by Gracias~Thanks that includes statements and drawings, and a book about why libraries are important inspired by Tomás and the Library Lady. The children also presented me with a basket that day that included chocolates because I’d written Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué Rico!, a lovely tea towel on which a mom had cross-stitched lovely poinsettias because I’d written The Gift of the Poinsettia: El regalo de la flor de nochebuena, and, one of my weaknesses pan dulce, Mexican sweet bread, made by a mom that morning because I’d written, The Bakery Lady/La señora de la panadería.

The children and teachers had decorated the room with their work including a bulletin board of “scary masks” inspired by reading Abuelos. The children said I could use the masks on “any kids you might know.” You can imagine how overwhelmed I felt at all the hard work that had been done by the students and their two wonderful teachers. I was also so impressed at the critical thinking the teachers had prompted in their students.

After their presentation, I asked the children how they thought I felt.

“Amazed?” they asked.

“Stunned?”

I laughed and said, “Teary,” which is the way I’ve felt as I typed this memory. I also received illustrated thank-you notes after our time together. As I say in my new book, Zing! Seven Creativity Practices for Educators and Students, teachers are treasures. My deep gracias~thanks to Ms.Gretchen Pelle and Ms. Kelly Mineo for reminding me how outstanding teachers enrich the lives of their students and for showering me with gifts and happy memories.