Author Visits Made Easy

Organizing exciting school visits by Children's Book Authors and illustrators requires an enormous amount of planning and cheerleading—not to mention fairly deep pockets. Yet the educational value of these gatherings far outweighs all of the time and money spent: kids connect with books in a powerful way as they come to appreciate the creative process and encounter potential career choices in the arts. Most importantly, when carefully planned, these visits bind the content of an author's work to the classroom learning experience.

Library media specialists are natural collaborators, so here's a chance to shine! Before you start planning, explore potential curriculum connections with an author's work. Middle and high school English teachers and librarians might study characters in young adult novels. Elementary classroom teachers and librarians might enhance the study of different regions with books rich in the geography, culture, or language. And at all levels, students can pursue visual or performing arts activities related to the author's work.

Many authors have wonderful experiences at schools that take the time to create curriculum connections.

For example, in preparation for a visit by Mary Casanova, who wrote Riot (Hyperion, 1996), based on a 1989 workers' riot that broke out in a small Minnesota town, one North Dakota school taught seventh graders about labor strikes and riots. The students were then asked to go online (news.mpr.org/features/199710/09_engerl_strike-m) to hear interviews with those who took part in the actual uprising. "The teacher told me the resulting book discussions were the 'best' he'd ever had," Casanova says. "When I arrived, students 'demonstrated' by carrying signs such as 'We love your books!'"

Jacqueline Briggs Martin, author of Snowflake Bentley (Houghton, 1998), the 1999 Caldecott Medal–winning biography of photographer Wilson Bentley, remembers a teacher and her students at the John Beatty School in Las Vegas who discussed Bentley's fascination with snowflakes and the beauty of things small. The teacher gave her students a camera and sent them outside to photograph their own small things of beauty. "This kind of activity extends the imagination by allowing students to think as Wilson Bentley thought," Martin says.

Deborah Wiles says that the week before her arrival at North Linn High School in Iowa, 10th-grade students read her picture book, Freedom Summer (S & S/Atheneum, 2001), set in the South during the pivotal summer of desegregation, and studied the civil rights movement. "They took photographs [of] marches, protests, sit-ins, etc., from the civil-rights era and wrote poems to go with the photographs," Wiles says. Then they created a Freedom Wall of photographs and poetry that addressed the issues of justice, tolerance, friendship, and human dignity. "We shared stories with one another," Wiles adds. "This activity made the book—and the history—more accessible to students."

Connections, however, may not be immediately obvious. Author Jane Kurtz says, "I visited a school where one teacher was studying ancient Egypt and used my book River Friendly, River Wild (S & S, 2000), about surviving the Red River flood of 1997, as her class talked about the flooding of the Nile." And with my picture book The Sea Chest (Dial, 2002), set at a fictitious Maine lighthouse, a third-grade teacher tied it to mathematics by having students design a lighthouse on graph paper and then calculate the area of the building.

Once your principal gives the green light for these visits, give yourself nine months to a year to plan. While finding an author or illustrator can seem daunting, personal recommendations are the easiest way to choose the ideal visitor. The Maine Association of School Libraries has a database of recommended authors and illustrators (130.111.34.60:85/default.htm), and many other states offer similar databases. If school and public librarians in your district or region don't host author visits, go beyond the local network. At least weekly, someone posts a query or a recommendation on LM_NET, an online discussion group for school librarians. Search the listserv's archives (www.askeric.org/Virtual/Listserv_Archives/LM_NET.shtml) or post your own query. Also try visiting an author's personal Web site, which often includes descriptions of school visits and fees. If you'd like to browse, try the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Web site (www.scbwi.org/links/mem_links. htm) or the Author and Illustrator Pages by Kay E. Vandergrift, a professor of children's literature at Rutgers University (www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kvander/AuthorSite). Both have databases of authors and illustrators with hot links to their personal sites. You can also contact publishers to ask about authors who are available for visits. The Children's Book Council maintains a list of publishers and information about their authors' visits (www.cbcbooks.org/html/visit_contacts.html).

Once you've chosen a speaker, the next step involves putting on your business cap and hammering out the details, beginning with a contract. Unless the author or illustrator has a standard contract, you must create one that outlines the particulars of the visit and protects you and your visitor from any misunderstandings. You can view a generic contract on my Web site (www.tonibuzzeo.com/visitcontracts.html).

The contract must include the visitor's fee and the expenses that will be covered. You will be expected to cover travel, food, and lodging expenses if your speaker is from out of town. To defray costs, share the visit with a neighboring school or public library. While there are some differences in fees regionally (fees in Maine range from $500 to $800 a day, but in the Connecticut-New York-New Jersey tristate area, they are closer to $700–$1,000 a day), the visitor's popularity will ultimately determine the price tag. The contract should state that a check will be delivered on the day of the visit. You may want to include a cancellation policy.

The contact should include a schedule, including the number of sessions per day and the size of groups. Include 15 to 20 minute breaks between sessions. Most authors will offer three or four sessions a day. Some prefer to address small groups of two or three classes at a time in a library. Others are happy to present to the entire school in an auditorium setting. Make sure to discuss specific needs, such as a screen and data projector for a PowerPoint presentation or any other necessary equipment.

Don't forget lunchtime—a home-cooked, potluck, or takeout meal is often appreciated. Many will be happy to lunch with a group of interested staff members and others like to lunch with a group of chosen students (however, this may count as one of the sessions). Few enjoy school lunch on a Styrofoam tray in a noisy cafeteria.

Finally, discuss book sales, and agree on a plan for selling and signing books. Consider an after-school or evening signing event. Books can be purchased from your local bookseller, the publisher (at a significant discount) or, in some cases, from the author or illustrator.

Once all of the details have been worked out and included in the contract, print and sign two copies of the document. Your administrator should sign the contract as well so that the school, rather than the librarian, hires the speaker.

When it comes to funding, be creative. Some schools have the luxury of district-funded visits, but most do not. Many parent-teacher groups raise money for cultural programming, including author and illustrator visits. Title I funds are sometimes an option. Don't overlook community partnerships with other agencies, including the public library and museums, which can, in turn, potentially attract community grant funding. Private funding from banks and other institutions is also a possibility. Many schools fund author visits with proceeds from book sales. Books obtained directly through the publisher at a 40 percent discount are then sold at their cover price, which, at the least, can establish seed money for future visits.

Above all, before the visit, make sure that students have read the author's work. Make it clear to teachers that this is mandatory for participation. Young adult novelist Catherine Atkins, an elementary and secondary alternative education teacher and author of When Jeff Comes Home (1999) and Alt Ed (2003, both by Putnam), suggests that teachers introduce books "in simple terms kids can relate to." When discussing When Jeff Comes Home, she says, "It's the story of a boy who is kidnapped and returns home. Usually kids ask, 'Does he have to go back to school?' I say 'yes,' and this leads to a good discussion."

It's inspiring to see literature come alive with learning through the efforts of talented teachers. After all, there's nothing more wasteful than spending $1,000 and a year of planning for an author visit that amounts to a magician's performance. While an hour's sleight of hand can generate smiles, curriculum connections are the single most important way to ensure a terrific and meaningful visit.