What can authors do make their presentations more accessible with newcomers kids learning English?
This is the question I’m talking about at the March conference of the New Hampshire School Library Media Association along with Sara Lesley Arnold and Darcie Gonzalez. They’ll talk about how to make school libraries welcoming to diverse learners. I’ve been interviewing visiting authors to learn their strategies. (There’ll be an article forthcoming.) But I wanted to share some secrets of colleagues at work with kids. They demonstrate a lot here. How to bring kids into the storytelling? How can you act out a story? Can you add a litlte readers’ theater? And puppets? What kind of bridge can puppets create to text? What is the power of humor? We’ll talk about this and more. Top left, to right. Author and storyteller Lindsay Bonilla in interactive storytelling with Polar Bear Island, her book which is itself a story of inclusion; me doing a reader’s theater with lines from The Good Braider; Deb Bruss presenting Book! Book! Book! with puppets of the story characters; and Marty Kelly who enlists teachers and librarians to act out his picture book. Help, I have to find out which book this is before we present!