Hello
Teachers :-)
from Mary Newell DePalma!
Celebrate the 100th Day of School
by reading Happy 100th Day!
See my Bookpage interview!
Read my blog post about writing a picture book.
Beginning Forestry for Young Learners: curriculum guide
This illustration is from my book
A Grand Old Tree.
Curriculum guides
I hope you find these guides useful as
starting places for classroom activities/discussions.
Click the book title to see the guides for:
A
Grand Old Tree
My
Chair
The
Nutcracker Doll
Rembrandt's
Hat
Roads
The
Strange Egg
Uh-Oh!
Bow-Wow Wiggle-Waggle
School
Visits
My school visits encourage students to be active participants:
writers, illustrators, readers and viewers.
The skills students are learning
in their
classroom are
the same ones
I use to create picture books. I encourage students to use these
skills to tell their own unique stories.
My lively and interactive presentations last about 50 minutes. We begin with a Visual Thinking Strategies exercise to get students observing and talking. I introduce the idea of visual language. We brainstorm, consider kinds of research, and I demonstrate how a story comes to life with a drawing session. Then I talk about the process of editing.
The students then participate in a call and response story time. Presentations
can be customized to suit your curriculum preferences.
Usually
I speak to small groups, so I bring visual aids that are appropriate to
a classroom-size setting. Please let me know if I will be speaking to an
auditorium-sized crowd and I
will present a powerpoint presentation. Your
school will have to provide the equipment to run the presentation. Thanks!
Generally, my fees are $500 for a half-day of presentations, $1000 for
a full day. I am located in Boston, MA, so travel expenses must be added
if your school is located outside the Boston area. I
prefer to schedule visits on Mondays or Tuesdays.
Email my school visit coordinator, Mary McDonough, for more information and/or to schedule a visit for your school!
Activities
Paper
Doll Activity Sheet (best
on stiff paper).
A ballerina with various costumes.
Design
some costumes
yourself!
Uh-Oh! Puppets and Coloring Pages
Color and construct puppets with these patterns and act out your own story.
Perfect Gift Coloring Pages
Color in these action scenes and add your own word bubbles.
Mythical Beast Marionette Theatre
Decorate and assemble a marionette theatre with these marionette patterns and your own box.
Read a description
of one of my library visits
in Talking Writing
Consider
a booksigning to defray the cost of the school visit.
Contact
your local independent bookseller to order books:
click
to find an independent bookstore near you
Find an Author
Find an author in your state who visits schools. I'm in Massachusetts. Kim Norman has made a list of authors who visit schools, by state: authorvisitsbystate.com
Another
list, from Kirsten Cappy at Curious
City -- Authorvisits.com
An author directory from the New England Society of
Children's Book Writers and illustrators: www.nescbwi.org/connections/
Another
MA Directory is:
South
Eastern MA Regional Library System Performer's Directory
Information
about authors and Authors who visit schools from the Drury University
School of Education:
USA
Writes 4 Kids
Seeds can be silly! click this link to see more.
In
April, I saw a frog!
I posted three pictures of trees covered with snow here. What do the snow covered trees remind you of? lace? vanilla frosting? It is sort of like looking at clouds, they have such interesting shapes!
Now It Is Winter, by Eileen Spinelli, (illustrated by me), has been selected for the Bank Street College Best Children's Books of the Year 2005! More about this distinction here.
My
Chair, by
Betsy James, (illustrated by me), is included in the 2004 edition of Children's
Books 2004, One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing,
a list of books recommended by librarians at the NYPL!
Visit my facebook page to see photos of school visits and children's art inspired by my books. It is where I post all of the latest news and events!
Mary Newell DePalma on Facebook.