Draw me a hamster with an elephant's body driving a Lamborghini

Garry Parsons describes how he approaches visiting schools to talk about his work as an illustrator, gives some tips on how to do it, and asks two teachers why they feel author and illustrator visits are beneficial to pupils.

One of the surprises of working as an illustrator in children’s publishing was being asked to take part in live events. My first picture book, Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray, won three awards during the first year of its publication and, as the illustrator, I was expected to speak publicly. Being a fairly private person, this was very daunting at first and, looking back, I’m sure in those first few years my events were probably pretty awful. But experience is a great teacher and I have learnt a lot about speaking in public and adapted my repertoire to hopefully enthuse and inspire children to pick up a pencil or read a book.

This Friday I visited a school in South London, my first of the year, and, with the thought of a busy World Book Week close on the horizon, I was keen to start the season off with a real cracker. 

Tip 1: Arrive in plenty of time.

With my mild anxiety about being late dealt with by arriving at the school half an hour early, I was greeted enthusiastically by the teacher I had been organizing the event with, and led around the school to where my workshops would be taking place during the day, and to the hall for the assembly. 

Tip 2: Set up your wares before the kids arrive.

I like to be drawing as the children are filing into the hall. You can hear the muffled chatter of excitement and murmurs of “Who?” “What?” “How?” and “Wow!” 

Children are gripped by live drawing, so I like to make the most of the flip chart paper.

Tip 3: Get everyone’s attention straight away. 

I like to do this by asking a question immediately. “Does anyone here like to draw?” I ask, and usually around 80% of hands go up.

I go on to tell them that there are three things that an illustrator needs, we quickly work out between us what these might be, and I draw these on the flip chart with fast strokes of a fat marker. Children love to interact with moans and laughter when I inform them that my pencil is in love with someone but it’s not me! 

We go through the importance of PRACTICE by unravelling a long concertina sketchbook, and the abstract notion of using your IMAGINATION by drawing a brave volunteer’s portrait. But I get it ‘wrong’ under the influence of my vivid imagination, which seemingly has a mind of its own and might add an elephant’s trunk, crazy oversized hair or giant ears to the drawing. This brings on peels of laughter.

By this point I usually feel I have the room engaged, but the time has flown by and I need to wrap it up with a five minute Q&A or, if it’s a longer assembly, I might continue with ‘Challenge the Illustrator,’ where I tell the children I can draw anything and they give me three random elements to put together in two minutes, a gorilla on a unicycle in Wembley Stadium. Either way, my intention is to have lit a fuse of enthusiasm that will carry me and the students into a series of workshops for the rest of the day.

In the workshops I explain the process of illustration, from text to final artwork, and how a picture book is made. I use examples of my work to show each of the stages and emphasise how important it is to keep the first stages fluid and not to be concerned about perfection and getting things right. That's where the romance of the pencil and the rubber comes in.

So how did the day in South London go? 

Well, it was a marvellous day with responsive children and enthusiastic and welcoming staff, it felt great and everyone seemed happy. 

This is what they said...

We had a very exciting visit from illustrator Garry Parsons. He amazed the children in an assembly with his illustration skills and quick imagination! His inspirational assembly and workshops had children in awe with a lot of spontaneous clapping.

But how do I know that schools really do get something out of author and illustrator visits? Is it worth schools spending scarce resources this way? 

I asked two experienced teachers from schools in Kent to get an inside point of view on why author and illustrator visits might be of benefit to them and their pupils and how they know a visit may have had an effect.

Mrs Bryant told me:

A visitor to your school can give pupils a fresh engagement with a subject, whether that is reading, writing or drawing, or even something less obvious like bee keeping or gymnastics. It can show children the aspect that gives education a purpose and gives them a reason for going to school. Authors and illustrators can be both inspirational and aspirational for pupils. 

Visits broaden views and often give a purposeful link to a unit of work that the pupils might be studying in class at that time or later, and we can ask questions such as “Would you like to do this as a job?” 

Miss Neech told me:

Meeting an author or illustrator in real life at your school brings in a reality, an actual person that children can directly engage with. And this is a shared experience for everyone in the school, including the teachers, and every school member can be uplifted by an inspiring speaker. When schools are required to focus on the academic, having a creative person, such as an illustrator or a writer, visiting the school is beneficial, because society is about creative thinking and problem solving. Not celebrating creativity would be a mistake!

For me, meeting the children is wonderful and I thoroughly enjoy visiting schools and having the opportunity to enthuse children about drawing and reading and about books. 

This aspect of being an illustrator has become a pleasure I had never considered when I started on the art work for Billy’s Bucket all those years ago. While the benefits of authors and illustrators visiting schools might be hard to measure from my perspective, I am convinced that they have a real impact because of the feedback from teachers, the fun that I can see the children have and, more than anything, the brilliant thank you letters I sometimes receive a few weeks later.

Garry Parsons is a children's book illustrator.


You can see more of my illustration for children's books on my website by clicking here. Get in touch to book Garry to visit your school, library or festival.

Follow me on twitter @icandrawdinos

10 Top Tips for Great Virtual Author Visits • Jonathan Emmett

Are you Skyping comfortably? Then I'll begin.

A couple of years ago two school children in North Carolina emailed me to ask if I’d make a Skype visit to their elementary class. The class had read my picture book The Princess and the Pig and wanted to ask me some questions about it. I’d been thinking about offering Skype visits for some time, so I agreed. The visit went really well. I read the book to the children who'd prepared some great questions to ask me afterwards. The visit had been very quick and easy to arrange and although I’d only spent half an hour talking to the children it was obvious they'd become very enthusiastic about my books as a result.

Skype author visits are very popular in the US with many US children’s authors offering short virtual visits for free as well as longer visits for a fee. It seemed like a great way to connect with young readers both in the UK and beyond, so in June last year I started offering a limited number of free Skype school visits through my web site.

One of my virtual visits to a school in Wisconsin

I did my twentieth virtual visit last term and already have another five lined up for this autumn. Some of the schools I've visited have not had an author visit of any kind before and every school has been very appreciative. Teachers often follow up with classroom activities and schools have sent me letters, drawings and even an ebook the children created in response to my visit.

virtualauthors.co.uk

Although the technology is in place, virtual visits don’t seem to have caught on in the UK in the way they have in the US and only three of my virtual visits have been to UK schools. I think their popularity in the US is partly due to web sites such as the Skype an Author Network and Kate Messner's “Authors who Skype” web page which lists authors offering free Skype visits to US schools. So in March this year I set up virtualauthors.co.uk a directory of UK authors and illustrators offering free 15-20 minute Skype visits to UK schools.


The Virtual Authors site includes a page of advice for authors and illustrators on how to set up virtual visits, but I thought I’d offer some further advice on this blog. So here are 10 top tips for great virtual author visits.

Arranging the visit

My virtual visits page

1: Set up a web page for your virtual visits

Since I don't charge for my virtual visits, I like to keep the admin time to an absolute minimum and most of my visits are arranged with one or two short emails. The virtual visits page on my web site attempts to answer all the questions that schools might want to ask such as ‘how long does a visit last?’ or ‘is there a minimum group size?’. There’s also a booking table showing which dates are currently available. If this information wasn’t on the site I’d have to spend time responding to these questions by email. Similarly, you can ask schools to email you their visit requests, but a visit request web form with ‘required’ fields is a good way to ensure that schools provide you with all the information you need in one go.

2. Confirm the school’s Skype-name in advance

One of details you need to get from the school is their Skype-name. Teachers sometimes get this wrong, so it’s worth making sure you have the correct Skypename by sending a “contact request” via Skype in advance of the visit. I usually do this as soon as I receive the booking request to get it out the way. Ask the school (via email) to make sure that they accept the contact request and then check that they've done so a couple of days before the visit. This eliminates any problems with making contact on the day.

Five minutes before the visit

3. Make sure you'll be presentable and in frame

On a real school visit, if you have spinach in your teeth or your flies are unzipped, someone will probably point this out to you before you appear in front of a room full of children. The first time anyone will see you on a virtual visit is when you appear on the screen, so take a quick look in the mirror to check that your hair’s not sticking up at an outrageous angle or make sure you haven’t got toothpaste smeared across your chin – unless that’s the look you’re going for!

You might also want to check that your webcam is angled so that the children can see your whole face and not just the top or bottom of your head! You can check how you'll appear on your webcam by using the preview window in Skype's preferences. On a Mac, click on Skype on the menu bar, then Preferences > Audio/Visual. On a PC, click Call > Video > Video Settings.

Don't look like you've just crawled out of bed and check that your face is well-framed.

4: Be seen in the right light

You don’t want the children to see you as a sinister silhouette, so make sure your face is adequately lit when you’re on camera. If you're Skyping during daylight hours, daylight from a window will often provide the best lighting. If you’re using a Mac or a PC with a large screen to Skype, bear in mind that the screen itself is a light source. If the desktop on your computer is bright green and there’s not much light coming from your surroundings, your face may be bathed in sickly green light. This might be perfect if you’re reading a horror story, but if you're not then a neutral-coloured desktop (or a blank white document) behind your Skype window will illuminate your features without a colour cast.

Unless you're deliberately going for sinister, make sure you're seen in a good light.

5. Take the phone off the hook

You don’t want anything distracting you while you talk to the children, so five minutes before the visit take your landline off the hook and switch your mobile to silent. You might also consider quitting or turning off any alert sounds for your email and Twitter accounts.

Eliminate any distractions before you Skype

6. Know who you're talking to

Even though it’s a virtual visit, you want it to feel as personal as possible. So if like me you’re not very good at remembering names, write the name of the teacher, the class or year group, the school and the school’s location on a small piece of paper and stick it right next to the camera where you’ll be able to read it without looking away from the screen.

Some tips on how to set up your screen

During the visit

7. Look at the camera – not the screen

One of the things that can make Skype conversations feel less real than face to face conversations is a lack of eye contact. Skype users tend to look at the other person’s face on the screen rather than straight into the camera. Most authors will be using a webcam that’s built into their laptop or desktop PC. It’s tempting to make the Skype window full screen so that you get a bigger image of the children, but if you have a large screen it’s worth keeping the Skype window relatively small and right next to the camera (see screen photo above). That way you can see the the whole class while keeping your eyes close to the camera, which will look a lot more natural from the children’s point of view. When I’m reading a picture book, I try to look straight into the camera for most of the time so that the children will feel I am reading directly to them.

Try to look straight at the camera when you're speaking to the children

8. Don’t shout

Try to speak at a natural volume. If you find yourself talking loudly without meaning to, it may be because you have the speaker volume set too low on your computer; the children sound quiet so you subconsciously raise your own voice to compensate for the apparent poor connection. Similarly if you’re Skyping to a large hall full of children there’s no need to raise your voice so that they can hear you at the back (as you'd do if you were there in person). If your audience can’t hear you, the teacher can turn up the volume at the school's end.

9. Ask the teacher to prompt the children's questions

My Skype sessions usually include a question and answer session. On my actual school visits I can select which children ask questions by pointing at them myself. This isn’t practical on a virtual visit as the class can’t accurately judge who you’re pointing at from your screen image. An easy way around this problem is to ask a teacher to pick and prompt each questioner in turn.

10: Take advantage of being at home

A virtual visit is no substitute for a real school visit, but speaking to the children from home does have some advantages. For instance, if you’re able to move your camera around, you can give the children a guided tour of your office. I only take a small selection of my books on my actual school visits, but on a virtual visit I have them all at hand. So If a child asks me about the first book I ever wrote or my favourite picture book by another author, I can take a copy from my bookshelf and show it to them!

Show don't tell!

I hope this post has made some of you – authors and teachers – want to give virtual school visits a try. If you're already an experienced virtual visitor and have any tips of your own, I’d love to hear them, so please post them in the comments below!

And If you’re a traditionally published author or illustrator that would like to be listed on virtualauthors.co.uk, please fill out the form on this page. Most of the authors that are currently listed on the site write for older children, so it would be great to have a few more picture book authors and illustrators.

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Jonathan Emmett's latest picture book is HERE BE MONSTERS, a swashbuckling tale of dastardly pirates and mysterious monsters, illustrated by Poly Bernatene and published by Macmillan Children's Books.

Find out more about Jonathan and his books at his Scribble Street web site or his blog. You can also follow Jonathan on facebook and twitter @scribblestreet.

See all of Jonathan's posts for Picture Book Den.

Why We Write – Alison Boyle

Question 1: Why should we write?
Answer 1: Because we must. 
Question 2: But why must we?
Answer 2: Eco-nomic necess-i-ty?

For most writers across the world it's flying in the face of economic necessity to spend time on writing.

Question 3: So why keep going in the face of hours of commitment that may end in a rejection?

I refer you back to Answer 1.

Balaclavian public art. Was it a Sassie who swooped on
the Northern Quarter in Manchester, England,
to paint this street furniture, then disappeared?

If we write picturebook texts and they move from the realm of our personal computer or notepad to the public realm of a printed book or eBook or app etc, our ideas and the way they're expressed have the potential to be remembered. They can get people thinking and talking and can provide the foundations for so much more.

If you are fortunate to have had one book published you'll know the thrill of either seeing it discovered by a 'new' reader or re-discovered by an 'old' reader.

PICTURE THE SCENE World Book Day 2012. A four year-old girl waits patiently for an exceedingly long snake of young children to be guided into the classroom for a Visiting Author session. I am the Visiting Author, I've brought some books with me that the school wants to buy. They're in my bag...

Four year-old Girl: What do you do?

Me: I write books, including for children.

Four year-old Girl: [Long pause, looking round at her classmates]: We're children.

Me: You are.

Four year-old Girl: Have I read any of your books?
[If she can read she is doing well for her age, and if she can't then I enjoy knowing that the grown-ups in her life are valuing her contribution]

Me: Maybe.
[Visiting Author scans the classroom, and seeing two healthy-sized wooden boxes of picturebooks, walks over with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Four year-old Girl watches Visiting Author with that question hanging in the air.

In under ten seconds a book by Visiting Author is located, and it's a well-thumbed edition. Four year-old Girl, who looks intrigued]

Me: I wrote this book.
[I did, I did, and it's in my top three and I've never fallen out with it, and I really liked the editor and the illustrator - this, as all published picturebook authors will know, is not guaranteed - and it's been borrowed thousands of times from libraries across the UK]

Four year-old Girl: [Smiles]

Me: [First I listen to an introduction by the teacher, then I launch into my World Book Day session, telling the story of a classmate who incited me to rummage through the class's book box.]

PICTURE ANOTHER SCENE A close friend I met in publishing leaves to qualify as a teacher and build a school in a remote part of Ghana with an inspirational Ghanaian woman. Literally build it, cement scooped into the boot of the Head's car to avoid it being syphoned off overnight before water can be added and bricks can be stuck together to make some walls.

Whilst over in Scotland my friend volunteers at a local primary school helping children who have additional needs, often due to their family circumstances.

The Volunteer Teacher asks a Seven year-old Boy to go to the bookshelf and choose five books...

Volunteer Teacher: 'Oh, you've chosen a book written by one of my friends.' [Note: No product placement involved]

Seven year-old Boy: [Looks askance at Volunteer Teacher] I don't believe you.

Volunteer Teacher: No, really.

[They read all of the books together]

Volunteer Teacher, friend, and biased-towards-me person: Which is your favourite out of those five?

Seven year-old Boy: This one.

Of course the chosen book is the one I wrote. If it hadn't been I wouldn't have heard the story. I protest to my friend that the boy was trying to impress his new teacher, whom he likes. The response was that the boy never chooses anything just to go along with the teacher. I don't think she's completely right, but I don't think she's completely wrong either. (By the way, it's the same book as in the first example.)

All writers have stories about how their words and ideas get people thinking and talking. Whether shared or not, these experiences bring sporadic energy to the ongoing labour of writing. Many authors are strapped for cash and finding it increasingly hard to make a living out of their art, due to fewer offers, lower advances and unsettled routes to market. But this is also a time of opportunity.

Writers need to survive for new writing to happen. I write because I have to, but it isn't just about me. Many children who are keen to read our books can't even get to school. If they can get to school and the schools are good ones, our books can make a difference.

Question 4: What can we do to reach readers?
Answer 4: We can write.

Question 1: Why should we write?
My Right Honourable Friend, I refer you back to the answer I gave some moments ago - Answer 1)

There's a story or two you might like to read on this website. If you look deep enough you will find the foundations.

On the side wall of a car park in Manchester, England,
an enormous bird perches; cement supports the painting's base.