Month: October 2013

It’s been so much fun interacting with classes reading MARTY MCGUIRE for this year’s Global Read Aloud. Students brainstormed some great questions for this week’s Q and A session!

Here’s the brainstorming chart I talked about in this week’s video. Note that “Stuff I like/find interesting” also includes things that scare me, which can be great material for writing. And Place I love/want to visit also includes places that I think would be interesting as settings, even if they’re not places I really love to spend time (like the doctor’s office!).

Once I’ve made my lists, I start mixing and matching. What if I wanted to write a story about snakes? I could set that story in a desert…and maybe someone lost in the desert could be bitten by a venomous snake, making it a survival story. Or what if the snake story were set in an airport? What if snakes were being transported from one zoo to another…and what if they escaped in the terminal? That could be a funny story OR a scary story, depending on the approach. The possibilities are really endless, and I’ve found that this is a fun way to come up with ideas that are fresh and unexpected. Give it a try and see what you come up with!

I’ll be back with our final MARTY MCGUIRE Global Read Aloud Video Q and A session next week. If your class would like to ask a question, please post a comment on this blog post (not last week’s!) no later than Wednesday 11/6 so that I have time to make the video. Remember to include the teacher’s name,  school, city/state/country, and your question. Please limit questions to one or two per class so that I can answer as many as possible. It helps if you look at which questions have already been asked to avoid repeats,  and questions need to be posted by teachers rather than individual students. Thanks – and I’ll see you next week!

Classrooms all over the world have been reading MARTY MCGUIRE as part of the Global Read Aloud this moth, and kids are coming up with some terrific questions for our Video Q and A sessions!

Here are a couple links that may be of interest to classes who want to know more about the real people whose names came up in this week’s video.

Mahatma Gandhi

Jane Goodall

And you should also look for this book in your library – it’s one of my favorites!

I’ll post another MARTY MCGUIRE Video Q and A session next Friday. If your class would like to ask a question, please post a comment on this blog post (not last week’s!) no later than Wednesday 10/30 so that I have time to make the video. Remember to include the teacher’s name,  school, city/state/country, and your question. Please limit questions to one or two per class so that I can answer as many as possible. It helps if you look at which questions have already been asked to avoid repeats,  and questions need to be posted by teachers rather than individual students. Thanks – and I’ll see you next week!

This week’s MARTY MCGUIRE Video Q and A session for the Global Read Aloud is up a little early, since I’m traveling starting tomorrow. I’ll be visiting Nashoba Brooks School in Concord, MA for writing workshops on Friday and then heading to Providence to speak & sign books at the Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors. If you live near there, I’d love it if you’d come by the festival to say hello in person!

For now, though… here are your answers to this week’s questions!

One more thing for those who asked about Marty’s teacher. Mrs. Aloi is actually named after a real person, my terrific sister-in-law, Linda Aloi, who teaches in the Rochester, NY area.  Here we are together the week I visited her school last year!

If you’d like to submit a question for next week’s video Q and A session, please leave a comment on this post (not one of the earlier ones…because I won’t find it) by WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23RD.  Later questions may be answered in comments but won’t make the video because I need time to edit & upload. Thanks!!

You’ve all had such terrific questions, and I wish I could do just fly around the world and visit every single one of your classes to talk about Marty some more. But if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to finish the new books I’m working on this fall. Next week, we’ll have another Video Q and A session, though. And teachers…if you’d like your class to have the opportunity to order personalized, signed books after your Global Read Aloud experience, please drop me a note via my contact form, and I’ll send you an order form for my local independent bookstore – I sign there often, and they offer free shipping for orders over $50.

And finally, for the class that wanted to know more about the scene where Marty’s mom uses a noose tool to catch Sparky when he’s escaped in the house…

http://nwco.net/0530-StepThreeNonlethalToolsAndTechniques/5-1-DirectCapture.asp

I’ll post another MARTY MCGUIRE Video Q and A session next Friday. If your class would like to ask a question, please post a comment on this blog post (not last week’s!) no later than Wednesday 10/16 so that I have time to make the video. Remember to include the teacher’s name,  school, city/state/country, and your question. Please limit questions to one or two per class so that I can answer as many as possible. It helps if you look at which questions have already been asked to avoid repeats,  and questions need to be posted by teachers rather than individual students. Thanks – and I’ll see you next week!

It has been a most exciting autumn for Marty McGuire and me. Marty’s first chapter book adventure, MARTY MCGUIRE, was selected as the 2013 Global Read Aloud title for Grades 1-3, which means that classrooms all over the world are sharing her story. This makes my author-heart very, very happy indeed. It also makes my author-email-in-box a very busy place. I’ve been enjoying all the conversations I’m having with classes reading the book, the back-and-forth discussions on Twitter, and the Skype visits.

At this point, my free Skype visit schedule for this fall is mostly full, though, so I wanted to offer something else for classes with whom I may not be able to connect via Skype.

Marty McGuire Video Q and A

Starting today – on this very blog post – classes reading MARTY MCGUIRE as part of the Global Read Aloud can submit questions in the comments section of this blog, and I’ll choose a whole bunch of them to answer in a video that I’ll share the following Friday. We’ll do this until the Global Read Aloud wraps up in mid-November. Sound like fun? I think so!

Note: This post is closed to comments now. To ask a question for Video Q and A, please go to www.katemessner.com/blog and leave your question on the latest Q and A post!

If you’d like to submit a question to be considered for next week’s video, please leave a comment on this post that includes these things:

 I won’t be able to answer every question via video, but I’ll sneak in as many as I can and try to answer the rest in blog comment replies, okay? Our first Video Q and A session will be posted on my blog (www.katemessner.com/blog)  on Friday, October 11th!

In the mean time, if your class is enjoying MARTY MCGUIRE, you’ll want to check out Marty’s second adventure, MARTY MCGUIRE DIGS WORMS (available now!) and the forthcoming MARTY MCGUIRE HAS TOO MANY PETS, which comes out this winter from Scholastic.