Category: Author Presentations

Our hope is that by intorducing students to a vareity of authors, we provide them more information about writes and their lifes, as well as entice them to read these wonderful writers.

Author Presentation: Tomie dePaola

 

Tomie dePaola is an extremely well-published children’s author, who has been producing published works for over 40 years. Growing up in a home where reading, writing, and illustrating were encouraged, he has been in love with this art form for nearly his entire life. He writes mostly narrative stories about different parts of his own childhood and family and other stories about different cultures. His illustrations are recognizable in all of his books, and he still continues to write and illustrate from his home in New Hampshire at the age of 78 years old with his beloved dog, Bronte.

Aileen Fisher

Aileen Fisher has over 100 award winning books. She had a passion for Children’s literature, and was quoted as saying “My first and chief love in writing is writing children’s verse.” She has written a variety of books in a number of different genres that have to do with seasons, nature, animals, celebrations, famous people, and biblical stories. She was raised in a small town in Michigan, but moved to Boulder, CO when she was an adult and lived there the rest of her adult life where she wrote most of her books. As the author of several books of different genres, Aileen Fisher’s work can be applied to many different lessons in the classroom. One such lesson, can involve a read aloud of one of her poems about the seasons when introducing the seasons to a Kindergarten class. Another such lesson, could incorporate a poem or book about a animal and its characteristics to a 1st grade class. Many of her books can be applied to several different content areas and TEKS; consequently, the variety of her writings are very useful in the classroom because they are adaptable to the different lessons taught throughout the school year. Aileen Fisher also uses “writerly techniques” such as imagery, personification, metaphors, and similies within most of her writings, which are important lessons in early childhood literacy.

Author Presentation: J. Patrick Lewis

J. Patrick Lewis is an American poet. He is the author of more than 80 children’s books. Lewis’ books relate to history, geography, mathematics, and science. Through his acrostic poetry, Lewis invokes connotations with the use of hyperboles and as he plays with the shape of the text. J. Patrick Lewis’ poetry is witty and simply beautiful.

Author Presentation: Shel Silverstein


Shel Silverstein is the world renowned poet best known for his quirky illustrations and dark playful poems. Silverstein uses fun a playful language, full of irony, exaggeration and humor. His poems are easy to understand and invite readers to imagine alongside him. Shel Silverstein makes reading fun and stress-free. Many of his poems of are nonsense and allow readers to just explore the music that different sounds can make. I know I was always surrounded by his art and words. He will be truly missed.

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Shel Silverstein reading “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too” from Where the Sidewalk Ends.

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Just For Fun: Shel Silverstein singing “The Ugliest Man in Town.”

Hayley Boardman

Author Presentation: Bruce Lansky

Bruce Lansky is an internationally known poet, sometimes referred to as the “King of Giggle Poetry”. He has a passion for getting children excited about reading and writing poetry and uses fun and playful language that is easy to understand and his poems are usually humorous. After publishing their own cookbook, Lansky and his wife built Meadowbrook Press and he tackled his dream of being a publisher. He decided he wanted to put together a children’s book of all the poems they loved best, so in order to find these poems, he tested poems in elementary schools and in the process began writing his own poems. He has spent a lot of time reading and testing poems in classrooms, and schools started inviting him to perform. He’s now performed at hundreds of schools. “My goal to put on the most entertaining, most educational, and most motivating assembly a school has ever had.” Lansky strives to get children involved in reading and writing poetry with his entertaining assemblies and playful poems.

Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers is an African American author who writes young adult literature. He is a New York Times bestselling author of more than eighty books for children and young adults. He mainly writes about urban youth struggles and African American teens. Following his success with young adult literature, Myers has branched out to works of nonfiction including topics of black history. In 2012, he was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Appointees travel around the country for a two-year term and travel around the country promoting the importance of fiction and nonfiction in the lives of young people. Walter Dean Myers theme for his term is “Reading is not optional.”