We had quite an event happen.
About a year ago, I read the book The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. I read this book aloud (it’s a picture book for younger children) to illustrate the idea of point of view in writing. A boy’s box of crayons is in conflict with each other because some are used too often and are exhausted while others are ignored or not used often enough. Beige crayon has an especially tough time as the boy has peeled off his wrapper and he’s lying nude in the bottom of the box. Anyway, Lily E decided to make a shadow box using crayons to make a 3D art representation of the characters in the book, write a note and send it off to the author.
http://www.oliverjeffers.com/picture-books/the-day-the-crayons-quit
We sent the gift out about three weeks ago to the publisher. We were very surprised to receive the message from our office that Drew Daywalt called for Lily and wants to set up a time to Skype with our classroom to thank her! She hadn’t even put our phone number in her correspondence so he put out effort to look us up in order to call!
Lily has been corresponding with him by email and we will be Skyping with him after he returns from his national book tour for a new book he’s promoting. So, look forward to updates in May about what’s going on with author Drew Daywalt!
-Wendy
Oak Room
WMS
UPDATE 5/9/17: We are planning to Skype with him this Thursday at 1pm, so that he can thank Lily for her gift and answer any questions we have for him.
UPDATE 5/15/17: Wow! Our Skype session with Drew Daywalt was amazing! It might go down as one of the coolest experiences I’ve had as a teacher. He was terrific: told the children about the new book he’s writing, told them about his ten years of rejection letters for his first book, showed them around his writing shed! But, that was not the part that I was taken with. With minimal guidance., the Oak students brainstormed and voted on the best questions. They put them in an order that made sense, they prepared cards and organized themselves as to who would say what… Drew even commented on how organized they were and how great their questions were. I was so proud! His latest book, while a picture book, would be a great gift for anyone in the Oak Room. It is titled The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors. We’ll have to wait a bit for his next release that he gave us some insights about!