My Journey…School Visits

In January, soon after the release date of “The Triplet Ballerinas”, I was asked by one of the teachers of my triplet granddaughters to visit their school and present the book I had written. This would be my first school visit, and I would be reading my book to a large group of 4^th grade students and their teachers. I can’t put into words how nervous I was sitting there before and as I read the book to them. It helped that my granddaughters were front and center supporting me. Surprisingly, most of the students listened to me read the book even though it was probably considered a “baby book” to them. Maybe this had to do with the fact that their classmates were the inspiration for the story I had written. After I read the book, I answered any questions they had. One of the questions was about how I was inspired to write about my triplet granddaughters. My answer to this was, when I was searching for something to write about, I realized that I had something in my daily life that a lot of people never experience-triplets in the family-and this was something I wanted to share and thought would make a great subject for a children’s book. Another question was about the character names in my book and how those were chosen. I explained that “Annie” was based on Makennna’s middle name of Anne, “Julie” was a derivative of Jaeli, and “Macie” was obviously a different form of spelling Maysie’s name.

Afterwards, I headed to my grandson’s classroom to read the book to his class. It was a smaller environment, so I wasn’t as nervous. My grandson presented me to his class, and after I read the copy of the book I was donating to his classroom, I was asked to sign it, which was one of the first times I did this. It was also gratifying to hear from my grandson’s teacher that her mother was a children’s book author too, but she went the traditional route and it took her more than twice as long to get her book published as it did me.

A few weeks later, the Kindergarten teacher of one of my youngest granddaughters also asked me to come visit their classroom. I, of course, read the book to the children, but I also “critiqued” the “writings” of the class which was a wonderful experience and mostly consisted of encouraging words. As I was leaving, one of the little girls in the class laughed and said, “King Poo Poo”, which is the name of the cat in my book. I realized then something I wrote had made a young child laugh and that is priceless. Beverly