Today’s 320 class was cancelled to give you the opportunity to attend Authorfest 2012 at Hebb Theatre from 4:30 to 6:00.  Below are the notes I took as I watched the event.  It’s not live tweeting but it’s close, I suppose:

• Kathie Shoemaker introduces Ellens Schawartz by sharing a kid’s book she wrote about Ellen.  This is a great look into the writing / illustrating process.  You can tell Kathie and Ellen are good friends.
• Ellen Schwartz takes the mic to “take us back in time” to a family gathering in New Jersey.  I’m guessing “write what you know” is likely to be a theme she touches on.  Or maybe stories are everywhere if you look close enough.
• Adult and kids table story sounds familiar to my family get togethers, as does the real wine and grape juice story…overeating, too!  The kids performances…not so much.
• Turns to talk about Mr. Belinsky’s Bagels:

• She suggests to “write what you FEEL”, a riff on “write what you know”
• Stealing Home grabs my attention.  A half-white, half-black boy plays ball in the Jackie Robinson era.  Sounds compelling as a baseball fan.  The themes of belonging and love are what motivated her to write the book, not a direct connection to JR.

• ES’s daughter serves as her editor.  With the daughter’s help, ES’s mystery novel went through 5 drafts before publication.  She hopes to make the Teaspoon Detectives into a series.
• Authors are not dead, claims ES.  (She’s living proof, I suppose)  She encourages teachers to do all they can to get Ss writing and be brave about their writing.
• ES ends with “It doesn’t matter how you write, it’s the sitting down and doing it.”
• Kathie introduces Bob Heidbreder, another author.  She characterizes him as a lover of language and a first-rate teacher.
• Bob’s wearing an ascot, I think.  He’s the tokin’, er…token poet.
• BH says poetry can add wildness to the staid classroom.  He advocates for “let’s make a lot of noise poetry readings”.
• BH taught a Ss who left his underwear in the cloak room.  The perfect grist for his poetic mill, as his poem proves.
• Bob uses his finger emphatically for his “power point” presentation.  Not hard to see why he was a great teacher.  He oozes energy, enthusiasm, and a love of language and learning.
• Making a poem smaller is sometimes harder says Bob.
• Bob has a blast reading Drumheller Dinosaur Dance, a book with only 30 or so words:

• Poetry stretches the boundary of language and movement and, as such, BH encourages us to embrace poetry.
• Here’s a YouTube clip of BH in action:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMNWkxZgm_M[/youtube]

• Linda Bailey is up next.  At the age of 12 LB performed in a girl band that played in a contest against Burton Cumming’s band that later became The Guess Who.
• Her new book, Toads on Toast, will be out soon.
• She will talk about writing on different genres, as she’s a genre-hopping author.  She finds trying something new exciting but risky.
• If I were to write a book, what genre might I choose?  Which genre might be easiest? hardest?  For some reason zombies are coming to mind.  A pretty tired idea in 2012 it seems to me.
• LB has several unpublished novels on her computer.  They are one offs that aren’t part of a series.  She revisits them to revise them so they’re ready for prime-time.  This is a good model of the need to take time with writing until it is its best before publishing.
• LB says picture books have levels; they must speak to kids as well as adults.  She re-wrties numerous times to get the balance just right.  She fiddles with her picture books instead of wrestling.
• Kids love characters who break the rules – Curious George, the Cat in the Hat, Max in his wolf suit in WTWTA, and so on.
• She starts her Stanley books with “Stanley knew he wasn’t supposed to…”

• LB writes graphic novels on history topics.  The books look really compelling.  They have a fictional story told in speaking bubbles and factual info in a blurb on each page.  Here’s an example:

• Modern non-fiction writing uses literary structures and principles.  It requires both the right- and left-brain.
• LB has more input into the illustrating process of her graphic novels seeing as she’s done the research.  Experts on the topics have to vet each book for accuracy.
• I think it’d be tough to give your book to someone else to do all the illustrations.  It’d be like letting someone else raise your child without having any input.  Does this analogy work?
• The sessions ended and the author’s took some questions.
• We applauded heartily.

That’s all for Authorfest 2012.

– Lawrence