Below are some of the highlights of Amy's recent school visits. Thanks to the schools for taking pictures, and to the teachers and kids for providing such a wonderful visit.

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS:
Here are some of my favorite student-produced bits of writing, or things that were done to celebrate books, visiting authors, etc.

The third grade students at Northfield Elementary School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee made this book of Please, Malese! with their own illustrations. It is a thing of beauty.

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Special mention has to go to the elementary and middle schools of Opelika, Alabama. They turned entire schools into beaver habitats, put one of my books to music and serenaded me with the song (!), covered the walls with writing based on my books or writing activities--and wrote some dynamite stories. Some samples:

A poem by a fifth grader that is his version of a Rachel Fister's Blister story.

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An Opelika fifth-grade class produced this piece of writing. The first half we brainstormed as a group exercise. The last half of the story was provided by individual students. Here's Monyana's story:

The Poker Playing Sheep Dog

Once, on a farm, a sheep dog wanted to play poker. Nobody wanted to play with him, so he snuck into the house and used the phone to call his friends. They decided to come over and play poker.

But then a wolf came. He ws going to eat them all, but the sheep dog said, "I will make you a deal." He said, "If you win in poker, you get to eat all of us, and if I win, you have to leave and never come back."

So they played poker, and the sheep dog won. The wolf went home sad and on an empty stomach. The wolf never came back.

The fifth grades at another Opelika school took it upon themselves to outdo Aunt Mattie (from No More Nice/Nasty) in coming up with weird, little known words (most of which I'd never heard of!!). I'm in awe. Here are Gregory's, Vaysha's, and Ravon's:

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There was more: The younger kids decorated the hallways in amazing ways. One whole wing of the school looked like a set for Little Beaver and the Echo.

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. They created double dictionaries with real definitions in one half, invented definitions in the other half (again, from No More Nasty); math games that teachers invented around Please Malese, artwork based on the teeth from Cousin Ruth's Tooth. I wish I had room for all of them here.

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It was truly amazing.Opelika rocks!

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On a visit to upstate New York, I visited a class that wrote their own version of Rachel Fister. They managed to use the name of every child in the class--and the same rhyme scheme as Rachel Fister! Here's an excerpt:

Mrs. Ferguson
ate a sticky bun
On her way to school one day

It was licky
and so icky
that she almost lost her way.

Jacob Johnson,
put your glasses on
on your way to school today.

Can you find poor
Mrs. Ferguson?
Oh, I hope that she's okay.

Julia Higgins
put on your swim fins.
Can you see her at the pool

doing back flips
eating corn chips
When she should be at our school?

An author luncheon given for me by Stony Lane School (Paramus, NJ) featured food based on my books:

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Here's the recipe for the rum cake.

They also created a huge "Word Walk" that used every letter of the alphabet as it wended its way around the library:

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Stoney Lane also had fun making up their own endings of proverbs. I provided the first half, and the first graders provided the rest:

Don't bite the hand...that the cat licked.

It's always darkest...just before bedtime.

A miss is as good as...a mister.

Children should be seen and not...seen smoking.

Strike while...mommy is not there.

No news is...on the television or radio.

Where there's smoke, there's...fireworks

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Ms. Boyd's Center Drive School kindergarten (Orrington, ME) made up their own version of "A-hunting We Will Go" during a writing workshop. My favorite is this ("We'll catch a cheetah/and put him in a pita/and then we'll let him go."):

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And the "What If" writing exercise produced endlessly inventive examples that kids came up with. Some favorites from various schools(original spelling):

What if...

* ...a spiter got stuck in a web? (Marissa, Gr. 1)

*...a spider spun a web of spageti? (Britney, Gr. 1)

*...spider spun a web of gum? (Jean, Gr.2)

* ... a humen could spin a web? A spider web was made of cotton candy?(Sara, Gr. 2)

*...you woke up as a spider? (Ford, Gr. 3)

*...a spider spun something different than a web? (Andrew, Gr. 4)

*...a web was made out of steel? (Jason, Gr. 5)

* ...the spider ran out of string for the web? ...he met a Frenchspider in a little pink skirt walking a small French fly...the spider spun the web on me? (Mrs. Caffrey's 4th grade, Rumford, RI)

* ...someone was half spider and half man? (A. J. Leavitt, Gr. 5)

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Mrs. Thacker's class at the M. J. Francis School in Rumford, RI, made this timeline of my life. It's huge: I must be VERY old!

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The San Benito, Texas, school district staged their Sixth Annual Literary Conference last spring, an event attended by hundreds of parents and kids.

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There were some fabulous authors at the event, including Tedd Arnold (behind me) and Patricia Hermes (to my right). Thanks, San Benito!

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