I spent Thursday in Coaldale at Jenny Emery School, taking part in their One School One Book program, where all the kids are read Feather Brain (at home, so families are involved, too). I loved the enthusiasm at the school – they loved the book, and were excited to meet me. This is a kids’ writer’s moment of fame – meeting all those great kids.
I usually create a story with the kids; here, because the groups were large, we’d agreed to start a story collectively and then let the kids continue on paper. But I missed the wildness of creating a story together, so, for the last class, the grade fours, I decided to go for it. We leapt into it, discovering that one of the boys in the group was an alien in disguise, on earth to find a power source buried under the school. The boy was volunteered by another, soon revealed to be his brother. Then I discovered there was a third brother, so naturally we had to have alien triplets. I couldn’t have asked for a better set up for a story.
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