This Is the Game

I’m soooooo excited!   Just this week I received the artwork for my spring 2011  picture book, This Is the Game, about the history of baseball.  It’s historical non-fiction and written in the same rhyme scheme as This Is the Feast and This Is the Dream.

The illustrator, Owen Smith, did a wonderful job of bringing that old-timey, 1940′s  feeling to the book.   I googled Owen and found out that his artwork has been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Time, Rolling Stone, and the New Yorker, for which he has created 15 cover illustrations.   Take a look!

Happy New Year!

Dear Readers (and I do mean readers!)

I have decided that my New Year’s Resolution is to update my blog on a regular basis.  I was pretty lax in 2009 and failed to journal some very important events.   So…  my new goal :  “20-10, blog again!”

I have to start with December 2009 and tell you about an amazing school visit I had at Paine Primary, situated front and center in a little town by the name of Trussville, Alabama, where Rachel Brockman is the media specialist extraordinaire.   It was a very cloudy day outside, but inside the sun was shining.  As I approached the media center,  the wall above and the walls on each side of the library doors were painted with scenes from all of my books.  I felt like I was entering storybook land!  Above the doors were the words: “Vivid Verbs and Colorful Words, and surrounding each scene were vivid verbs and colorful words that the kids had found after reading the books.  Is that not the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow, the elephant’s instep!   (Ohhh, now those are some colorful words!)

The phrase Vivid Verbs and Colorful Words is one I repeat time after time when I give my Write On! writing workshop. As a writer I try to paint pictures with words, in other words,  I try to create visuals in the mind of the reader.  That is what writing is all about!   And Ms. Brockman got it!!  The kids at Paine Primary are such lucky pants to have Ms. Brockman as their media specialist!

But that wasn’t all that was amazing about Paine Primary.   It was the kids!!!   So smart and eager to learn, and not only that, they were very, very polite.  My favorite combination!  And wow!  are these kids readers.  I signed book after book after book, almost 300 in total!  What a way to end 2009!

Awesome day at Vestavia Hills East

What a wonderful, whirlwind of a day at Vestavia Hills East on Friday!  Mrs. Ayers, librarian extraordinaire,  gave me the rock star treatment from the get- go!   I walked into the school and the first thing I saw was a huge red banner with the words “Welcome Author Diane Z. Shore!” and on both sides of the hallway beautiful works of art decorated the walls!  The students had chosen a scene from one of my books and drew their version of it.  Wow!   Many talented artists attend Vestavia Hills East!

And the day just kept getting better from there!  The students in ALL of the sessions were very responsive and very attentive (my favorite combination!)   Boy did we have a boppin’ good time.    Ms. Ayers had all the students well prepared.  I especially felt a tingle in my heart when at the last session the students were “squeekin’” and “creekin’” right along with me as the bus-a-saurus gobbled up his stops.  That made my day!!!

And afterwards I stayed and signed a ton of books.  Wow!  Vestavia Hills East has a LOT of readers!!!    I do have a warning for those of you who ordered  How To Drive Your Sister Crazy.   “DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT, let your sister read the book.  She may try the different pranks out on you!

Have a super- de- dooper rest of the school year and thank you sooooooo much for inviting me to your school!

Roswell North Rocks!

It was a whirlwind of a week at Roswell North Elementary (Fulton County, GA) where I gave 13 presentations to close to 1,00o kids!   What a school with very polite and attentive students, who LOVE to read! I had a great time a-rockin’ and a-readin’ and just having a lot of fun.  I received a lot of positive feedback from teachers, parents and students!  Book sales were just sly of $1,500!   OF course the favorite was How to Drive Your Sister Crazy, which I sold out of.  Even the principal bought a copy!

I think a lot of thanks needs to go to Martha Powell, their Media Specialist.   She has so many activities, clubs, and wonderful books in the library and she has made it so welcome for EVERYONE!   You rock, Roswell North!

Great Week in Habersham County

I had a terrific 4 days in scenic Habersham County last week.   I gave presentations to both Sixth Grade Academies.   I don’t usually talk to sixth graders so late in the year, (because they SCARE me!!) but this went great.   The students were very polite, attentive, AND receptive!   Nancy Simmons and Dianne Parrish are super librarians, and it’s obvious they love their jobs, and know the importance of READING and WRITING!!  They couldn’t say enough about how my Poetry Party! presentation, which covers all different types of figurative speech, was perfect for the upcoming writing assessment test.     Wooo-hooo!

Helen O’Brien and Karen Hinson at Level Grove went all out last Wednesday.  I knew it was going to be a great day when I saw the bulletin board right outside the library.  Karen had the the bulletin board decorated in a movie premier theme and I was the star attraction!  It was soooo cool!

A also had the privilege of  having lunch with the Georgia Young Author winners from Level Grove.  What great writers!  I even  read their stories, so creative!

Lots of talent up there in Habersham!    Glad I had the chance to be a part of it!

Back to South Carolina

Whew!  What a whirlwind three days in North Augusta, Aiken and Orangeburg, South Carolina.

First stop was Mossy Creek Elementary where media specialist extraordinare, Liz Knapp and parent volunteer  extraordinaire, Charlene Miller planned an author visit in three days!!!  (I had met Charlene the prior week at the SCIRA conference)  Mossy Creek is a  great school with great kids AND super teachers and parents.  I had forgotten my power cord to my laptop, and amazingly, Liz had one that was compatible with my computer!  She saved the day!    But that’s Liz.  You should see her library.  It was filled with costumes and props from back during the Civil War.  Oh, you can tell the kids have a fun time during library time with Liz.

Next stop, Chukker Creek in Aiken, where I did three lively sessions (lots of kids packed in the gymnasium!)     Debbie Sessions had the kids and teachers well prepared for the visit.  The teacher who played Mrs. Stein during my Poetry Pary! presentation had the kids howling!  She did a terrific (or should I say horrific job!)

Next stop was Orangeburg Prep School.  Orangeburg is very close to Bamburg which I visited back in November and found a wonderful friend, Harriet Coker, who invited me to stay with her.   I took her out to dinner at the new restuarant in town.  Now mind you, Bamburg only had one other restuarant!   At one of the tables sat a family where the boy and girl kept looking over at our table.  After dinner they came over to our table and asked for my autograph.  They had remembered me from the school visit back in November.   I had signed books for them both, so they already had my autograph, but I signed their napkins anyway!  Then another family came in and the father asked if I was the person who dressed up like the pilgrim for the presentation back in November.  They remembered too!  I felt like a celebrity!

On Thursday it was on to Orangeburg Prep School, where Celia Richardson had everything ready to go.   And boy did she have the kids well prepared. I ran out of both How to Drive Your Sister Crazy AND Bus-A-Saurus Bop!

It was a wonderful 3 days in South Carolina!

A Wonderful Week in South Carolina!

    Wow!  What a week I had in South Carolina.  I briefly saw my wonderful library friend Harriet in Bamburg, then from there I traveled to Sumter and had two terrific days of school visits at Pocalla Springs Elementary.    Donna Myles, the media specialist had all the kids well prepared and everything went swimmingly!  (Isn’t that a great word!)    One of the 5th grade classes used my poem “Another Note From Mom” for a writing/illustrating exercise.   Each student in the class took one line from the poem and illustrated it.  Then they recited it!  Too cool!   And several of the kids had some great ideas for the next book in  the How to Drive Your Sister Crazy series.   I can’t tell you what they are because I don’t want to give them away, but any of you girls out there with younger brothers and sisters, be on the lookout for fake spiders!   

   From Pocalla Springs I traveled to the great city (pop. 8,000) where I presentated at Pleasant Hill Elementary.   Jolla Powell was a terrific hostess.  She told me a lot of history in the county and it seemed that she knew someone or was related to someone in every house we passed on the way to dinner.   What was so special about Hemingway was coffee the next morning at the Liar’s Table at Floyd’s Grocery.   Can you say Mayberry?     Small towns are so homey! 

    Then off to the South Carolina Reading Conference where I met lots of media specialists and a wonderful illustrator, Floyd Cooper.  He has illustrated 80 books!!!  And he recently won the Coretta Scott King Award.       I also talked with Highlights publisher Kent Brown, whom I had met about 10 years ago when he critiqued some of my poetry.  

  I think Donna and Jolla are going to send pictures, so I’ll post those when I get them.

Greetings from Mobile!

Greetings from Mobile! I’m down here for two days of author visits and the Mobile Public Library’s Young Author’s Conference. Today I visited St. Ignatius Catholic School’s K-5 graders! What terrific and smart students. The librarian, Dorothy Beattie showed me around the school and the display of shape poetry the students made! Some of the poems were very creative!