Kate Messner & Our Skype Visit with Update

Our third grade was very lucky and had the opportunity to visit with Kate Messner recently.  We had all read her picture books Over and Under the Snow and Sea Monsters First Day, and a lot of us had read Marty McGuire.  We really enjoyed getting to talk to her and ask lots of questions about her writing process.  She shared about some of her favorite books she read as a child (Ramona books and Judy Blume books), where she got her ideas for the books we had read, and about carrying around a notebook to jot cool ideas down.  We found out that the new Marty McGuire will be published in the spring and we cannot wait to get our hands on it.

After the visit, we wanted to figure out a way to say thank you.  The students that are happy to be in front of a camera have spoken for all of us in the video below.  We hope you enjoy seeing their response to Kate.  If you or your class are interested in Skyping with Kate or with other authors, she has a fantastic blog post explaining how it all works and which authors do this: Authors Who Skype with Classes or Book Clubs (for free).  This was our schools' second Skype author visit.  The first was Tom Angleberger of Origami Yoda fame with our 4th & 5th grade - and he was a hoot.  We would like to make virtual author visits a regular occurrence because we learn so much and they are extremely fun. Thanks again to Kate Messner who made our day.

P.S. I forgot to add the video messages of one of my classes.  They let me know it when I showed them the video above.  Sooooo, here are their messages too.