Lester L. Laminac, author,teacher, professor and speaker visited Washington Township Elementary School on Tuesday, October 5th. He shared real life stories with kids, and explained how he turned them into stories. He shared that each character is a real person he has met. He showed the children some of his journals and notebooks and how a story evolves from a few bullet point ideas to a full blown story with all the changes and rewrites included.
Lester also explained how all picture books are 32 pages, take out the title pages and copyright pages and an author only has 29 pages, or 14 full "spreads," so the author and illustrator must condense the story into 14 separate sections and the pictures must coordinate with that part of the story. Mr. Laminac also encouraged the children to keep a notebook handy and write down funny situations or story ideas that pop into their head. Those may be the base for a full story in the future. Lester also shared some fun "tricks" to look out for in his books, such as a reoccurring character, and references to other books of his in the illustrations.
The children were given the opportunity to purchase one of his books, including "Snow Day," "Jake's 100th Day of School," Saturday's and Teacakes," "The Sunsets of Miss Olivia Wiggins," and "Trevor's Wiggly-Wobbly Tooth." Mr. Laminac then autographed and signed a personal note to each student that purchased one of the books. To find out more about Lester L. Laminac, visit: http://www.lesterlaminack.com/
Congratulations go out to Students of the Week that were celebrated the week of September 27th.
1st Grade: 1C - Rivers Cherry, 1H - Callie Feldsein, 1P - Sydney Sweitzer
2nd Grade: 2B - Mikaela Armstrong, 2F- Sunjay Raman, 2R - Emily Grass
3rd Grade: 3B - Stone Zubeck, 3M -J.J. Stewart
4th Grade: 4C - Maddy Moore, 4B - Jacklyn Lukes, 4U - Skyler LaPrad
5th Grade: 5K - Morgan Olson, 5R - Aaron Carmichael, 5Z - Noah Risner
