A while ago, the librarian at Caronport Elementary School invited me to come as a guest speaker during their Literacy Week. As I already had a presentation about my writing/publishing process prepared from the last time I was invited to talk at a school, I happily agreed, and we made arrangements for January 27th.
I did the presentation twice, once for their grade 7s and once for their grade 8s, and I was very impressed with how engaged and enthusiastic the students were! They had some fantastic questions, and a few of the grade 8s who were already fans of When Shadows Fall were very excited to talk to me about the book (and ask some prying questions about the sequel! 😉).
I was particularly honoured to discover that the grade 7 teacher enjoyed When Shadows Fall so much that she is currently reading it to her class for a novel study! As an author, I'm absolutely tickled pink about this, and it was really neat to spend time with students who are reading the book and even see their artwork of the story so far. (Which several of them wanted me to sign!)
Overall, the experience was very rewarding, and an excellent reminder of why it is good to step out of the comfort zone. Public speaking makes me quite nervous, but I'm always surprised how much I get into it and how rewarding the experience ends up being.
Here are a couple pictures from the presentations!
