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.
Thanks for reading!
M
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Cover photo by Yan Krukau.