Launch Party for Hatching Chicks in Room 6: The Book has Hatched! 0

By Caroline Arnold

In May 2014, I was invited to do an author visit at Haynes Center for Enriched Studies elementary school in West Hills, California. After my presentation, Jennifer Best, a kindergarten teacher at Haynes, asked me if I had ever written a book about hatching chicks. Each spring, she told me, she brings eggs to her classroom and hatches chicks. But she said she couldn’t find any books that were written at the right level for her kindergarten students. I hadn’t written any books about chickens, although I had written a number of books about other kinds of birds and how they hatched their eggs. I liked the idea of a book about hatching chicks, and a year later I was in Mrs. Best’s classroom learning about eggs and chicks along with the children and documenting the process with photos. My new book, Hatching Chicks in Room 6 is the result of that project.

On January 19, 2017, I visited Haynes CES to present Hatching Chicks in Room 6 to the school, and to celebrate its publication with Mrs. Best, her students who are in the book, and their families.

The party was after school, but earlier in the day I gave two assemblies in the auditorium to all grades, where I presented the book and talked about the process of writing it.

Even for students who didn't have Mrs. Best for kindergarten (she is one of three kindergarten teachers in the school), there was school-wide excitement about the book. During the incubation and hatching process many students in other classes drop by Room 6 to see the eggs and chicks and check their progress. During the assembly I gave a book to Mrs. Meade, the principal, and to the librarian for the school library.

The party was held in Mrs. Best’s classroom and began with a presentation of an autographed book to each child. I also gave each child a postcard and a chick lollipop—they could choose a yellow, pink, or blue lollipop. To my surprise, the pink and blue chicks were just as popular as the yellow ones. (I ordered the lollipops online.)

After the presentation and photographs it was time to eat. I provided cupcakes decorated to look like chicks. (I bought the candy eyes and beaks at a local cake decorating shop.) We also had some healthier food—fruit, cheese, crackers and veggie sticks—and by the end of the party, all the food was completely gone. 

The children who are in the book are now in second grade. They were thrilled to get the books and so were their parents. Almost all the children who are in the book came to the party, even several who had moved to other schools. I want to thank Jennifer Best, her kindergarten students of 2014-15, their families, and everyone at Charlesbridge for helping to make this a great book!

A Q&A with David Biedrzycki, Author of Groundhog's Runaway Shadow 1

We spoke with David Biedryzcki, the author of Groundhog's Runaway Shadow, about his inspiration and process behind writing and illustrating the book, just in time for Groundhog Day! 

The idea of a runaway shadow is something that’s often played with in fiction. What drew you to this idea?

Initially, the idea for the story wasn’t at all about a groundhog. It was about a very boring person. His shadow one day decided it wanted more out of life than to just work in the quality control department of a Grass Seed Company watching grass grow.

As with most of my ideas, I started showing it in little bits during my presentations at school visits. The idea wasn’t resonating very well with students. I was thinking of shelving the idea for a while but one day after a presentation a student came up to me and suggested she’d like to see the main character as an animal. Bingo!

The story has a little more meat to it, too. It can also be read as a story about growing up, and staying friends even when you change. Why did you think this lesson was important for kids?

Good friends have much in common. But the friends I find the most interesting are the ones that are diverse and have different interests. Those are the friends I learn the most from.

Sometimes I might not totally agree with their points of view or beliefs, but deep down inside they are good people and good friends. They just have a different take on life than I do. I respect that and they respect me. I think sometimes that’s lacking in today's social media society, where a lot of people are spewing out their point of view and not taking time to listen or understand anyone else’s.

Groundhog’s Runaway Shadow works as an introduction to the tale of Groundhog Day. Did you originally think of this story with that in mind?

Well ,when that student suggested I have an animal as the main character, I immediately thought “groundhog,” with a different take on the story. Sometimes the groundhog sees his shadow and sometimes he doesn’t. So where is the shadow? Is his shadow still sleeping? Did his shadow run away? Why did it run away? Once I had that idea in place, the shadow became a character with it’s own wants and desires. I researched and found out that groundhogs by nature are very sedentary. They have a very limited palate: clover, tree bark and dandelions. Boring. But when the groundhog was little, he acted like a little kid, full of energy and fun. As he got older, though, he was expected to act a certain way. That’s when his shadow started having his own ideas.

Tell us a little about the process of writing and illustrating a book. Do the illustrations come first, or do the words? How do you work on both in harmony?

It has always been the drawing first. The drawings, for me, always plant the seed. I’ve always worked like that and probably will continue to create like that forever. I draw and then write the words. When I get stuck for words, I do more drawings. That’s my process.

Here are some drawings that inspired the beginning ideas for Groundhog’s Runaway Shadow.

<br>Happy First Birthday Dear Book!<br> Reading Picture Books with Children One Year Later<p><font size=2>by Megan Dowd Lambert</font></p> 0

Earlier in October I gave a talk at The Carle’s annual Educator’s Night applying the Whole Book Approach to some of the books illustrated by the keynote speaker, Christian Robinson. In preparation for this talk I’d visited local schools and read his books with students, so I got to share their responses to his work with him and the rest of the audience.

Here Christian is looking at a picture that I’d discussed with kids. The text has Nana say that the tree is “drinking through a straw” and the children read the picture and noticed that the reflection in the puddle makes it look like the tree is going down through the ground into the water, like a straw breaking the surface of the water in a glass. “That’s not what I intended, but I can’t stop seeing it now,” Christian said.

Isn’t that wonderful?

In my Bank Street talk I quoted a line from Reader Response theorist, Louise Rosenblatt, who wrote, “Books do not simply happen to people. People happen to books,” when she described reading as a “transaction” between the reader and a text. It follows that meaning resides, not in the text, but in the space between the reader and the text, and this line of thinking allows us to engage with a book and consider a multiplicity of possible meanings it might provoke depending on what the reader brings to the reading transaction.

Allowing readers to “happen to books” is at the heart of my Whole Book Approach work as I center children’s responses to text, art, and design—the whole book—during storytimes. And, hearing readers’ responses to my book over this past year has been just wonderful. It’s so gratifying to know that teachers, librarians, parents, and other caregivers are reading my book and getting new tools to add to their storytime toolkits as they renew their appreciation for picture books and shore up their passion for reading with children.

An exciting surprise is that I’ve heard from many artists, writers, an publishing professionals, too. These are people who are already engaged in the creation of picture books and are using my book to augment their knowledge and refine their craft. And, several writers and artists have told me that they’ve used my book to hone storytime skills since visiting schools and libraries to lead book programming has become a big part of their promotional work.

Although I’ve had some readers reach out to me through my website, one of the main ways I’ve heard from people has been through social media. I had never even had a personal Facebook page before this year, but right before Reading Picture Books with Children came out I joined Twitter, and then a few months later I bit the bullet and set up a public author’s Facebook page. I haven’t really taken off with Facebook, but Twitter has been a great way to interact with readers, learn from others in the field, and otherwise immerse myself in a community of people passionate about children’s literature. I am daily grateful for the connections I’ve made there and for the ways it allows me to grow as a writer, a teacher, and a reader.

November 2016 is Picture Book Month, and I will draw upon my book to tweet about picture book art and design. I'll feature new books each day that make the most of design and production elements including: trim size and orientation; jackets and cases; endpapers; front & back matter, typography; and page design elements such as framing, pageturners, and the gutter. Follow along and enjoy!

I have lots of other projects and events on the horizon related to this book, including a guest lecture in a Book Studies course at my alma mater, Smith College, a Skyped Whole Book Approach training with educators in Indiana, and a workshop at a public library in Massachusetts, among other plans. And, of course, I will keep reading picture books with children. I have other writing projects in the works, too—essays, picture book texts, and more Whole Book Approach storytime documentation.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this first year of my book’s publication a success—especially to my readers and to the many people at Charlesbridge, The Carle, and Simmons College who have supported me as I’ve stepped into the role of author. I am hoping my book will appear on lots of holiday shopping lists for teachers, librarians, writers, illustrators, parents and other caregivers (a portion of all royalties goes to support The Carle and you can purchase signed copies through The Carle’s Shop), and I am always eager to hear from readers about their Whole Book Approach experiences. 

Happy Whole Book Approach reading to all,

Megan