We invited author Rick Chrustowski for a visit with area kids yesterday and today and it has been wonderful. He has a heavy schedule - stops at six schools and a final evening presentation for us tonight for Earth Day. The first half of the visit has been a wild success. What factors helped?
- A vibrant, engaged presenter who inspires kids to read, write and draw.
- Willingness to share his talents by involving as many schools as we could accomodate to partner and share costs.
- Tying it into local Earth Day/Month efforts and picking up extra financial support as well as promotional support for the presentation for the general public.
- Keeping all partners informed and updated on logistics; schedules; deadlines.
- Careful scheduling and negotiating with partners that allowed sufficient time for Rick's set-up and take down and travel between sites that meant no speeding, dashing or overt sweating.
- Early contact with publisher and local bookstore to insure sufficient supplies of books.
- Creating a bookmark with Rick's autograph to hand out at the schools rather than having him do signings at each site. We kept book signings at the library only (to help encourage attendance and because we have no time constraints for that evening presentation).
- Shared hosting of lunches/dinners between the schools and public library so lots of people got to interact and visit on a personal level with a book creator.
- Sending out promo bookmarks for the public library presentation to kids at schools who didn't have a chance to be part of his school visits.
It's so much fun to help kids connect to the fact that real live people create the content in all those books on the shelves.With good preparation and willing partners, it is a perfect way to promote literacy and pique kids interest in books!
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