A. S. King was amazing! I went to her small session where she told us about her experience working and presenting to kids. Then she was our evening guest speaker where she told us about her experiences growing up, becoming a writer and the books, people and experiences that had the biggest impacts on her. She had us laughing and crying and wanting to be better people. She also made me want to reread Paul Zindel’s The Pigman for the first time since about 1978. I learned the word congealed from that book, but it was one of the first books with truly realistic characters that really spoke to me as a teen.
Here is a cool fact: at about age 14 she wrote down that she wanted to write books that would help kids understand adults and adults understand kids. How cool is that!?
Here is an important question for educators: How often do we let kids just write? No prompt, just write about what they are thinking, experiencing, worrying about, either as narrative or as fiction.
And now, just for laughs, here is the outtake:
Now, go out and read her books!
booksandbassets 