A Real Live Author! (Blog #21 11/21/08)

That's what Ava said about Eric Kimmel's visit to ISB this week. "He's a real writer and he gets paid and he doesn't have to do his own illustrations!" This snippet from his bio gives a clue as to why he was such a hit.

He headed west, to Easton, Pennsylvania where he graduated from Lafayette College in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Eric worked as an elementary school teacher at P.S. 68 in Manhattan while working on his masters degree at New York University. From there he went to the US. Virgin Islands where he worked as a teacher and librarian. He spent a lot of time lying on St. Thomas’ beautiful beaches.

Returning to reality, he finished his Ph.D. degree in Education at the University of Illinois in 1973. He taught courses in language arts, children’s literature, and storytelling at Indiana University at South Bend in South Bend, Indiana from 1973 to 1978, and from 1978 to 1993 at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Eric retired from college teaching in 1993 to become a full-time writer.

Eric travels throughout the United States and the world visiting schools, talking about his books, and telling stories. His first love is sharing stories from different countries and cultures.

The elementary school spent the past few weeks reading Kimmel books, decorating the halls, writing their own stories, entering hat designing contests, and getting ready to host a "real live writer." Eric has kind of a specialty of retelling tales from around the world, especially the Anansi trickster stories from West Africa and traditional Judaic tales (his book Herschel and Hannukah Goblins won the Caldecott Medal) as well as stories from China, Mexico, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Each class got 15 minutes or so with him to ask questions about being a writer and have their books signed.

One thing that I do like about ISB is that it places a huge emphasis on writing and reading. It is a literature-rich school and every teacher I meet talks about books. Reading books from different genres is widely encouraged and students are actively taught ways to interact with and respond to books. It's very common to see the kids come in from recess, shuck off their coats, and plop into their desks with a book. About 40 minutes is given to independent reading every day (as well as 40 minutes of writing). Still, there's nothing like having an actual author in your midst to really fire up the kids. I heard several of them talking about how they thought it was hard to come up with ideas for stories, but they had lots of ideas about how to retell a traditional fairy tale. It was a great week!