Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Cindy and Lynn: Author visits are amazing things. If you haven’t hosted one, do it. Find a place and make it happen and watch the fun. Our BBYA club loved meeting with another author this week, but we want to give a little shout out to one of our community’s fine teen resources: The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Holland. Jennifer Jones (JJ) and her staff energetically run a fabulous teen center for area students and they were delighted to benefit from our visiting author, David Macinnis Gill. Our local independent bookstore, Treehouse Books, shares authors with us frequently, so we offered them the chance to have David spend part of his Michigan time with them. Store owner Michelle Lonergan suggested the great idea to have him visit the Boys and Girls Club teen center where she donates her advance reader copies. Turns out the teens had never met an author and were excited by the opportunity. Even though they hadn’t read Soul Enchilada before the visit, David drew on his years as a high school teacher and engaged them in his presentation. We were so impressed with the teens’ questions and reading–they went to the mic and talked about Cormier’s After the First Death and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men when David asked them what they’d been reading. One asked David how his choice of perspective affects the reader’s reaction to the story! They came up to the mic and read from the book cold, doing a fabulous job. We purchased some copies of Soul Enchilada to donate to the center, as did Treehouse Books, so that these teens will have easy access to the book and we are scheming ideas to stay in touch with JJ to plan some future book discussions and literary events. Thanks to Treehouse Books, JJ, David Gill, Greenwillow Books, and Brilliance Audio for making this memorable event possible.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 am and is filed under Author Visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.