Authors'+School+Visits

In the three years that I have been the teacher-librarian at our school we have had various English author and French author visits. These are the authors who visited our school.


 * English Authors**

__**Simon Rose**__ Simon was born in Derbyshire, England in 1961. He has a degree in history. He moved to Canada in 1990 and is a prolific writer of children's fiction. The Alchemist’s Portrait, was published in 2003 followed by The Sorcerer’s Letterbox in 2004, The Clone Conspiracy in 2005, The Emerald Curse in 2006, The Heretic’s Tomb in 2007 and The Doomsday Mask in 2009. A seventh novel for middle grades, The Time Camera, will be published in 2011, along with The Insistence of Memory, a novel for young adults.

For Simon's visit I read our grade 4-5 classes __The Sorcerer's Letterbox__. The students found this book very engaging and enjoyed it very much. Simon shared with the students the non-fiction resources he used for his research for the novel. He shared with them his original manuscript with all the editor's comments on it. The students discovered that they are not the only ones who have to do revisions to their writing!!! They were quite astonished at this revelation! Simon was a very engaging speaker and I am very happy I was able to have him visit our school and talk to our students.

Simon Rose's official website: @http://www.simon-rose.com/

__**Maggie De Vries**__ Maggie was born in Ontario in 1961. She has been a substitute teacher and has taught university courses in children's literature and creative writing. She is the recipient of various awards including being a Governor General finalist for the adult book //Missing Sarah//. Maggie writes for children, young adults and adults. She visited our school and talked to our grade 4-6 students about two of her books: __The Great White Fish__ and __Fraser Bear__. Our grade 5-6 English class had completed a research project on sturgeon earlier in the year and had read __The Great White Fish__. __Fraser Bear__ is a very interesting book as it parallels both the salmon and the black bear. Maggie shared how she conducted her research for both the books by showing the students a PowerPoint presentation of her photographs of the places she visited while conducting her research. They were fascinated and had many good questions for her. But the topic that really captured their attention was her discussion on how books are actually made. They simply had no idea how this process happened. For them books just appeared in the library! There was also a discussion on revisions as Maggie is both a creative writing teacher at the university level as well as an editor. We were very fortunate to have Maggie come to our school.

Maggie De Vries official website: http://www.maggiedevries.com/


 * __Judy Cox__**

Judy Cox came all the way from Ontario, Oregon to visit us. In preparation for her visit I read her book __The Mystery of the Burmese Bandicoot__ to our grades 3-5 classes. Judy is a retired elementary teacher with a great passion for books, stories and animals. She is a prolific writer, having written 21 children's books and 33 magazine stories for publications such as OWL and Chickadee. She shared how she became a writer with the students, how she writes, and what she collects. This fascinated our students. She decided to collect rejection slips from publishing companies. She shared how many rejection slips she has and how many books she has written and made a deep impression on the students on the virtue of perseverance and believing in yourself. She was a highly engaging speaker who's previous teaching experience was very obvious! We thoroughly enjoyed having her!

Judy Cox's official website: http://www.judycox.net/