Why Professional Writers won't come to your school for free

You'd love to have an author come to your school to talk about research and writing. So you take the next step and write to a few of them, inviting them to come.

Why then does it surprise you that your chosen ones won't come for free? Shouldn't they do it as a gift for the children? (After all, they write children's books, don't they?)

Nikki Grimes has written an excellent blog post listing some of the many reasons that authors and illustrators charge for speaking to schools and groups.

I agree with all of it.
Writing is our business.
Income from writing and speaking goes toward feeding and clothing our children/ paying our bills/ etc.
Would YOU take an unpaid day off from work, get up at 5 am to drive several hours to another school, give four presentations, plus socialization with the organizers, then drive back home again through rush hour traffic -- for free? Not to mention the preparation time and the recovery time from being exhausted. Writers lose several working days doing this.

Oh, you say, but so-and-so will come for free. They've self-published their book and only require us to sell X-many copies of it to the children.
My response is -- have you read this book? Is it even up to the writing quality that you require of your students? Compare it to the literary quality of books produced by real publishers -- publishers who pay the authors/ illustrators and spend a year helping the author make this book the best it can be.
(You do know that self-published authors pay someone to print their book and it gets very little editing, don't you?)

Which book would you rather your students read to encourage them to enjoy reading and to learn good writing skills?
-wendieO

Nonfiction Monday is Here

Today is Monday and that means the bloggers are reviewing children's nonfiction books today. Here's a sampling. Click on the links and enjoy. And keep checking back because I'll be adding more links every few hours:

Jeanlittlelibrary has a review of Bug Zoo by Nick Baker.

Mary Ann Scheuer's blog at Great Kids Books this morning is a bit different from the usual. Instead of recommending a great book for kids, she is sharing a most useful resource for parents: Getting to Calm: Cool-headed strategies for parenting tweens and teens, by Laura Kastner and Jennifer Wyatt. She says, "It's been a great resource to me as I've entered the water of parenting a moody, temperamental tween!" Since I also have a tween in the house, I'd better check it out, myself.

Over at NCTEACHERSTUFF, Jeff Barger has reviewed Saltypie: A Choctaw Journey from Darkness into Light written by Tim Tingle; illustrated by Karen Clarkson.

Charlotte from Charlotte's Library is in with What Goes On In My Head? How your brain works and why you do what you do, by Robert Winston.

There's a real treat over at Shelf Employed -- an interactive interview with Janice Weaver, author of Hudson, a biography of Henry Hudson. Join in the interview and ask your own questions!

Sarah at In Need of Chocolate says she has reviewed two books on Egypt: Pharaoh's Boat and The Great Pyramid.

Anastasia Suen is enjoying Into the Deep: The Life of Naturalist and Explorer William Beebe by David Sheldon at Picture Book of the Day.

Angela Craft at Bookish Blather has a review of Russell Freedman's stunning The War to End All Wars.

Over at Playing by the Book, is a review of Where Does The Poo Go? by Caren Trafford, illustrated by Jade Oakley.

There's a review of Insects: Biggest! Littlest! written by Sandra Markle at the Wild About Nature blog.

Shirley at SimplyScience today discusses the classification of Protists by Steve Parker. What are Protists? You'll have to check out her blog to find out.

This is Banned Book Week and MsMac over at MacLibrary talks about her experience with book banning.

Margo at the Fourth Musketeer reviews a new edition of the picture book, Old Abe, Eagle Hero: The Civil War's Most Famous Mascot, by Patrick Young.

The Allen County Public Library (in Indiana)will be holding their Mock Sibert discussion and Election on December 11. All sorts of great books are on the discussion list. Mandy invites all of you to please click here to add your voice to the discussion in the comment section of the ACPL Mock Sibert blog.

Carol Hinz points out that today at the Lerner books blog, she is kicking off a week focused on Rebecca L. Johnson's new book Journey into the Deep: Discovering New Ocean Creatures.

Wow, Becky has reviewed two books at two different blogs:
At Becky's Book Reviews, she has Liberty or Death by Margaret Whitman Blair.
And at Young Readers she reviews Lost Boy by Jane Yolen.

Lynne Marie on My Word Playground features a a spark of inspiration for nonfiction writers. It's a writing prompt from nonfiction author, Lori Mortensen, whose nonfiction book, COME SEE THE EARTH TURN: The Story of Foucault's Pendulum, just came out. The interview also features another of her non-fiction books,In the Trees, Honey Bees!

Tammy Flanders at Apples with Many Seeds looks at the book Kakapo Rescue: saving the world’ strangest parrot by Sy Montgomery.

At The Cat & The Fiddle, Michelle Markel explores the many possibilities of picture book biographies.

Middle-school librarian, Cindy Dobrez at the Booklist blog, "Bookends," is reviewing Young Zeus by G. Brian Karas this week.

Jennie at Biblio File analyzed a book for adults who work with children's literature, From the Beast to the Blonde: on Fairy Tales and their Tellers by Marina Warner.

Janet Squires at All about the Books with Janet Squires selected I Spy Shapes in Art by Lucy Micklethwait.

Tina Nichols Coury ­ at Tales From the Rushmore Kid interviews author Vicki Oransky Wittenstein, where she describes what
inspired her to write about astronomer Geoff Macy. The title of her book is Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths.

And, there's even a PODcast.

Children's NF author Mary Kay Carson talked about her new Scientists in the Field book, The Bat Scientists, on a local NPR radio show over the weekend called Field Notes with Thane Maynard, director of the Cincinnati Zoo.
Click here for The Bat Scientists author, Mary Kay Carson's interview. (I hope these links work.)

Why invite an author to your school or group?

With the much tighter school budgets these days, parents and teachers sometimes wonder if their slim programming money would be better spent on an entertainer who might have a 'message' to convey to their students (Don't do drugs, etc.) or on bringing an author to the school. Which one will help the students more? (Which one can they justify best to the administration?)

Why spend the money on a published author, when there are self-published authors who will do the job for free. (provided, of course, that you allow them to sell their self-published book to the kids. How could you lose? You get a free speaker. What a deal?)

Members of CANSCAIP (Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers) have created a list of Frequently Asked Questions that address that very conundrum.

Use it the next time a school asks, "why they should invite YOU/ what's in it for the students?"
Also be sure to use the information you gather on Alexis O'Neill's blog, school visits Experts.com which offers you even more ideas about doing school visits.
-w

Spider in the car -- found

I found that invisible spider that had been living in my car.
Tonight.
in the dark
After work.

I was sitting at a stoplight when a brown/grey spider with very skinny legs crawled into my sight on the car windshield. It's like it didn't know I was there.
I grabbed my iPhone and squashed that spider. (with the back of the iPhone, natch.)
I had time to clean my iPhone and partially clean the window before the light turned green.

Crossing fingers and toes that there are no more 'visitors' planning to live in my car this fall.
-wendieO

Nonfiction Monday

To satisfy your Nonfiction needs for today, click on over to the wrapped in foil blog.

Newbery/ Caldecott 2011 predictions (so far)

Time to think about the big awards.
What? (you say)
But the fall books haven't come out yet.

So true.
And how many times have we been sideswiped by winners that we haven't even read yet, because they came out late in the fall and only the committee knew about them.

But still...
There's a great discussion going on over at Fuse #8's blog. Betsy Bird (the Fuse #8, herself) has laid out her predictions for these awards on her blog for all to see, discuss, and object to if they wish.
She's waving the flag for some of my favorite books of the year.

What are your favorites?
-wendieO

September is Spider Month

I seem to remember having said this before.
Yup. I said it here. And here. And here.

I'm convinced I have a spider in my car.
How do I know?
Well, every day I get into my car, I break through a spider traveling line. Not a whole web, thank heavens, just the line. Then, while I'm driving, the sun makes more spider lines glisten across the front windshield. I flap my hand at them and they break.

No, I've never seen the spider. And since I don't think it can get any food and water, I don't expect it to last long. But it's been about three days now with me discovering spider travel lines in the morning. IN MY CAR!

I'll have to admit, an invisible spider is less scary than the one I found last year.
I was driving up I-95, going to work. To move into the right hand lane I check my windshield mirror, then the side mirror, then I turn my head to the check the view out of the side and then the back passenger window.
EEEEEEEK!
Your friendly neighborhood spider had made a huge web back there -- and was sitting right in the middle of it.
I'm lucky I didn't cause an accident right there with my reaction.

You can believe that I pulled off at the next exit (my exit, actually), stopped the car and whapped that spider good.

It's probably not cold enough yet for the spiders to come out in droves and invade home and library.
I can't wait for October, when they do.
-wendieO