Hey, Hey, Hay! We're starting Book Commercial Today!

It's that time of year! I'm very excited to start our second grade book commercial project again this year! One thing we want to do is connect our students with an actual published children's book author.  This step is so very important in the process.  It helps our students see that authors are real people and how they go about writing their books.

A few weeks ago, I searched Nepris.com for a children's book author who I thought could connect well to our second graders. I was very happy to find Christy Mihaly who seemed like just the right fit for our room. Mrs. Mihaly recently published two books, one of which is called Hey, Hey, Hay!  I sent her a message through Nepris and she agreed to be our author this year. 

Today was our first of hopefully a few chats where we talked about her books, her writing process, and how books are promoted.  Mrs. Zureick and I were so pleased to see that she related beautifully to the students, talked through the entire writing and publishing process, and even talked about how she needs to promote her books.  Wow!  I was surprised how much work goes into making a book successful. 

As she said to us, "My book isn't doing its job if no one is reading it." In other words, the book promotion is just as important as the writing process.  What an amazing segue into our commercial process.  Soon we will be working hard to promote good books in our school library and (hopefully) in local book stores. 

As an extra bonus, Mrs. Mihaly was even nice enough to take her laptop into her Vermont backyard to show us the fall colors in New England -- a welcome change to our unseasonably warm October days here in Kentucky.

Thank you, Mrs. Mihaly and Nepris for making today happen!