• Ballet is for Everyone! (30 minutes – PreK-2nd Grade)  We can all enjoy the arts through performances and books, even if we never were a ballerina.  I read my book FIRST BALLET and a selection of other picture books promoting the arts and a ballerina shows the children some ballet positions and does a short demonstration.

• From Idea to Print:  How a Book is Made (45 minutes-Grades 1+)  Books start out as ideas scribbled on scratch paper or typed in the computer  They grow and change through many stages until finally they arrive in your hands at the library or bookstore.  In this session, I read from FIRST BALLET and a selection of other picture books.  I share the story of how FIRST BALLET became a book and have the kids act out all of the stages as we pretend to write our own book together.

• Exciting Writing! (45 minutes-Grades 3+)   What makes a story grab you?   Person, place, problem or promise.  In this session, I teach the p’s of exciting writing as we create a wild, attention-grabbing story together.  I read from a selection of exciting children’s book excerpts and demonstrate how these traits even apply to simple poems like FIRST BALLET.

• Poetry Workshop (45 minutes-Grades 4+)  Each kind of poetry has a different set of rules.  In this session, I teach the basic rules of rhyme and the differences between the three major types of poetry.  I will read from FIRST BALLET and a selection of other poems to illustrate concepts.  The session closes with a critique session where the students become the editors and correct the rule mistakes for existing (sometimes famous) poems.

To order books for an event, contact Hyperion Books for Children and ask for the 45% School/Library Discount.  To place an order, please call out toll free Customer Service phone number: 1-800 242-7737. Be sure to state that you are ordering books for an author appearance.

FIRST BALLET, Deanna Caswell
(Hyperion 2009)
ISBN-10: 1423113535