Author Visit: Lauren Myracle

April 1, 2008

Thank you to Cooperating School Districts for sharing another great author visit with us. Our class of 8th graders truly enjoyed it. I must admit that when I heard some of the excerpt from the book, I didn’t know what to think. There was frank and descriptive language that I was not sure how the students would react.

Lauren’s books are targeted to adolescents and she started the videoconference by telling students a story of how reading is important. She connected with this age group in a way that I don’t normally see. She was so engaging and lively. Her website shows the type of books that she writes.

When I asked the teacher how it went, here is the response I got.

She was very good. My kids and I loved her openness and her zeal, etc. We were the last school to ask questions. Our questions were written out and we introduced ourselves etc, and she really liked that. She complemented our group for that….and she loved their questions. We got to ask the most questions, since we were prepared. The other two schools just made up a couple of questions–flew by the seat of their pants so to speak. She was very through in answering all questions.

My class told me thanks over and over for letting them be a part of the conference. I think all of the kids learned that authors are just ordinary folks…..who could get rejected 143 times as Lauren Myracle did. But she persevered and now she has several best-sellers.

I just think any of these conferences bring the subject to life for our students.
Thanks for including us!!!

The note about preparing questions ahead of time is from our districts being accustomed to using the ASK Process and in Weather With Rusty. I rarely see high quality questions generated “on-the-fly” in videoconferences. Be sure to assist your schools in having students generate quality questions. Here are some tips I am working on compiling.

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