WORLD READ ALOUD DAY 2024

Happy Valentine’s Day! ♥️

I can’t believe it’s been a week already since World Read Aloud Day on February 7th. It was my first time ever participating and I loved it so much, that I’m already looking forward to next year’s. I hope I’ll be able to meet more wonderful students, teachers, and librarians then.

I was lucky to virtually visit a total of 8 schools in different states from Florida and Texas to Massachusetts and Missouri. I signed up for WRAD on Kate Messner’s website on November, and by the end of December I had already filled my available schedule. So, the key is really to plan in advance.

I read Santiago’s Dinosaurios 🦕 🦖 to several classes with students from preschool up to 2nd grade. Some visits included two or more classes connected at the same time. It was very rewarding to see the children excited about the dinosaurs, but also about the Spanish.

All of the schools that invited me to read to their students were very interested in having someone bilingual, since they have a high population of students who spoke Spanish and were experiencing Santiago’s journey with English. So for me, to have some kids addressing me in Spanish or asking me questions in my language was very moving, and I could see in their faces it was a big deal for them too. Actually, one presentation with a school in Irving, Texas was 100% in Spanish, and it was very special.

Besides reading the book, there was also some time to tell them a bit of who I am, how I became a writer, and what’s the story behind Santiago’s Dinosaurios. At the end there was time for questions, and some of them were very sweet and interesting. There were questions I’ve heard before, but this time some kids (from different schools) asked me why I didn’t include aquatic or flying dinosaurs in my book, and that was new and interesting. The answer: I needed to pay close attention to the sizes of the dinos for the dinosaur-size layer to work, so I only used land herbivores. Still, the questions made me realize that children do know a lot about dinos and they completely love them.

Once the event was over, I sent a thank you email to the school librarians who contacted me. I made sure to let them know about the free educational resources and teaching guide on my website and I also shared the news about my upcoming picture book Abuelita’s Gift: A Día de Muertos story, which will be released in September 2024, with a Spanish edition available too.

Finally, I want to share some tips for authors wanting to participate in next year’s WRAD. I hope you find them useful.

• Check out Kate Messner’s call for authors wanting to participate on the event. On 2023 she published the form at the end of October.
• Consider how much time you want to have available for the virtual school visits, it’s up to you to set up the times according to your own schedule. Keep in mind each virtual visit is about 20 minutes.
• Be flexible, since there are some schools who might need other hours than those that you have considered, especially because you can be contacted by schools in other time zones. Of course, it’s up to you to decide your times.
• Allow free time in between visits so you can rest your voice and drink water. This year I did two sessions in a row, and then I had a break for 20 or sometimes 40 minutes in between. It worked perfectly for me.
• On the day of the event, have all the links for the zoom or google meets ready, so you don’t have to be looking for them through your email. I had a document with the name of the school, name of librarian, the time, zoom link, and notes such as: Presentation in Spanish. This helped me stay organized on actual WRAD.
• Keep track of the time, since you only have 20 minutes and you might have another session next, or maybe the school has another author after you. You don’t want to go over the scheduled time.
• Practice reading your book aloud several times, so you’re comfortable with it when the time comes.
• Make sure to allow time for questions at the end, since kids really like them and it takes a while to get them organized. I’d say to consider between 5-8 minutes for questions.
• Consider having a digital version of the book ready to be shared. I asked authors on Twitter what they do for virtual read aloud, and many said they shared their screens with the digital book for all kids to see. I had that ready to go, but with some schools I just wasn’t able to do it, so I ended up reading from the actual book and showing it on the screen.
• For PreK students, reading from the actual book worked well because I was able to zoom on some details of the illustrations I wanted to highlight and I didn’t read the story word by word, due to their shorter attention span.
• Be prepared and ready for the unexpected, avoid losing precious time fighting technology.
• Do your best, but know that sometimes things just don’t go our way. Having trouble with sound and connection are very possible, so don’t stress out if that happens.
• Don’t forget to have fun! Sharing your story and books with children is the best gift you can get as an author.

Thanks for reading!

M

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Cover photo by Yan Krukau.