Last month I did readings at St. John's School in Vancouver. I spoke to students in Grades 6 and 7, and the focus was a little different than many of my readings.
These kids are in a design class, and they were studying various aspects of the design of picture book covers. So my talk was more focussed on the illustrations than on the writing of the books. Of course, there was still a lot of discussion on the stories behind the stories, but we also examined early illustrator sketches and reasons for major changes in the design or illustration of the books.
I had never considered my books from so purely an illustrative (is that a word? I guess it is now…) point of view, and found it really informative and fun. The kids also had a lot of good questions to ask me, which further pushed me to think about my stories from that point of view.
A little brain stretching that day, and I enjoyed and appreciated it. Thanks, St. John's!