Career Day diary at Brick Elementary

April 30, 2024 — As I was turning into the Brick Elementary School parking lot, I heard a loud rumbling nearby. I looked around but didn’t see a truck or anything that could be making the noise. Then I saw the helicopter hovering overhead getting ready to land in Brick’s field. I thought, this is a pretty big deal. There was someone standing in the lot directing traffic and many, many cars. Brick goes all out for its students. 

Surprisingly (or not in Michigan) April 24 dawned cold and windy with a little drizzle. Happy spring :) Perhaps I’d overlooked something, but I hadn’t realized the event was taking place OUTDOORS! I was dressed for a quick trip from my car to the indoors. Luckily, we don’t live too far away and I have a supportive husband. He came to the rescue with my winter coat, gloves, hat and some small hand weights to keep my board etc. from blowing away. With amusement (and a bit of dismay), I noted that the most popular item and topic of discussion were the little hand weights on my table. With the wind gusts, there was no way I could have successfully positioned my tri-fold board upright. I lay it flat on my table. And someone from the school came around with Gorilla Tape to help secure it. 

My table, and a few others, were moved to an area with a little more wind coverage. I was next to the ambulance and across from the backhoe, which had a LOUD horn. Know where this is headed? Haha. I’m glad I’m not too easily annoyed but you can guess what the theme song was for Career Day. BEEP BEEP BEEP … BEEP!! And repeat … I’m glad the kids were having fun, even though it made talking with the kids at my table harder. 

Questions from the children included the most asked (aside from the ones about the weights “can I pick these up? Or “what are these for?”) were: how long did it take you to make this book? How do you get your ideas? How did you make the book so long? How did you make the cover? How did you make the book like this (pointing to the binding) without staples? What made you want to write this book? Some really good questions.

The question about how long the book took to make got me thinking. What I said was that if I count from getting the idea, to writing, editing, hiring an illustrator, a book designer, and publishing the book — a year-and-a-half to two years. They were surprised by this. One said she thought I’d say something like two weeks. I explained that there is a lot involved and it takes time. 

I asked children if they like to read books. Most said yes! I asked if they like to write. Some said yes. Some had written books already. I asked what they’re interested in for careers when they grow up. Some of the careers students said they had interest in for their future were: being in the NBA (several of the boys), football player, doctor, nurse, marine biologist, author, police, ambulance driver. Many were unsure, of course and I assured them that they have lots of time to figure this out.

Not surprisingly, I was reminded of the short attention spans of children. Every time I do an event, I’ll learn something for the next time. Because it was a STEM event, I included some info and materials from my science communication job previous to becoming an author. It would have been better to just focus on my being an author. That’s mostly what I talked about. 

The table next to me was run by Krista, a dietician. She had a nice little activity for the children to do, sorting plastic foods into various groups. Kids love hands-on activities (hence the popularity of my hand weights). The windy day wouldn’t have lent itself well to the writing and drawing activity in the back of my book. Maybe a few small dry erase boards would do the job? Good ideas for another time. 

I had one small furry fox on my table as a decorative little prop (this was the prize for the contest I tried to have that didn’t get any entries). I have a number of the foxes in case I get entries sent in via my website or for future author events. If I’d seen one of the little girls from Literacy Night, I was going to award it to her, but I didn’t see her. I did see several other children I’d met at Lit Night, which was nice. They remembered me. I got a BIG smile from Phoebe. I met a couple of teachers, who were very nice and loved their jobs. It’s a STEM school and a school of choice. 

The fox was the object of some arguments between two of the youngest kiddos. “It’s my favorite.” “NOOOO it’s MYYY favorite!” Me: “it can be both of your favorites.” That actually helped a little. At some point, and I don’t know exactly what happened, the same little girl was screaming her head off while she was holding on to the fox with all her might. There was even a small tug-of-war between her and a little boy. I went over to their side of the table and put my arm around her and tried some comforting words. It helped eventually. It was so loud with the honking horn and all the day’s activity, I don’t think anyone even noticed. I was worried that people might wonder why I had a screaming child at my table. After those children left the area, I quickly put the fox away in my bag! Note to self: don’t bring foxy next time! 

A couple groups of children asked me to read my book to them. It lasted a page for some of them, as they were called away by the teachers to go to another area. One little girl stayed for the entire book as other children came and went, listening in. She was very observant, pointing out certain things in the illustrations. On the page with the quiet mouse, she asked, “what does that say?” She was pointing to the PSST coming from the mouse whispering into the boys ear. I told her she was the first to say anything about it, at least to me. The book designer flipped that illustration around (for design reasons) so that it reads TSSP! I think it’s a fun little trivia about the book.

Along these same lines, one of the books that my husband’s cousins ordered early on was printed entirely backwards, with the last page first and so on. They’d brought it to my first book event for me to sign. I offered to trade it for a “normal” copy and I’d exchange theirs, but they wanted to keep it. They said someday when I’m famous, it would be valuable (haha). I signed it upside down or some silly thing. 

I stayed at Career Day through lunchtime. They provided pizza, cookies, drinks. Lunch was inside and it was good to begin to thaw out. Even through the gloves, my hands (and probably everyone else’s, were numb). Krista and I ate together and decided it was time to go after lunch. We were there almost the whole time. Given the weather, we felt we did very well.  

During the event, one child started reading it to himself and laughed out loud at the first page on the silly goose, especially after he read “Gooseberry Lane,” which he repeated to himself. I told him he’d just made my day, hearing him laugh like that. Despite the cold, drizzly, windy weather, these were bright rays of sunshine that made it all worthwhile!

Next week, I’ll write about hosting an author table at Adventure, Ink, for Independent Bookstore Day. Hey, I might just be getting more comfortable with these events. I hope that you’ll find something helpful within my experiences. As always, thank you for reading. My website doesn’t have a comments or “like” feature so I’d love to hear from you on social media and/or via my contact page.