The Best Part About Doing Author Events

Recently my wife and I sat down and tried to add up the total number of school visits we have done. It’s hard to come up with an exact number, but I’ve been publishing middle grade books now for a little over ten years and during most of that time, we’ve done schools visits pretty regularly. Our best guess is that, including all the virtual presentations we did last year, we have visited a little over 3,000 schools. Assuming the average attendance is around 300 kids, that’s coming up on a million children who we’ve been able to talk to about reading, writing, and creativity.

At first that number boggled my mind and I had to double check it on my phone’s calculator. (Math has never been my strong suit.) But it’s true. Over the past ten years I have talked to nearly a millions students, mostly between second and sixth grade, about  kids like Malala Yousafzai, Alexandra Scott, Ryan Hreljac, and Michaela DePrince, who changed the world. We’ve shown them how to come up with a great story idea in five minutes, and explored themes like finding our magic, changing the world, celebrating our diversity, and how everyone’s brain is different.

When I tell other authors that a typical tour involves doing four assemblies a day five days a week for six to eight weeks, I usually get either an envious, “That sounds so amazing,” or a look of total horror. These are both valid responses, because mostly it’s the best thing in the world, and Jennifer and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but yeah there are the moments where you ask yourself why am I here? But these moments are almost always because the weather was bad, there was a scheduling error, someone forgot to order books, or an adult didn’t really care about the event, but ever ever because of the kids who are 100% amazing.

There are lots of great perks to doing these visits. I have boxes and boxes of hilarious and inspiring letters from students, enough t-shirts to make a really amazing quilt, great e-mails that still get me teary-eyed when I go back and read them, and way too many water bottles and pens. But the biggest payoff, by far, are the individual lives we’ve been able to touch.

Over the years, as I’ve changed book series, and modified my message accordingly, my presentations have varied. Kids are really good at letting you know what is in and out by how they respond to your presentation. “Okay, Chuck Norris jokes are out this year, but narwhals are huge. Flossing is so last year, but any jokes that include marshmallows or giant cheese-vomiting baloney sandwiches always get a huge laugh. Any story where the student mentions the word poop will cause a near riot of laughing from all grades.” (Note: I have no idea why marshmallow jokes are so funny to kids. But they have been for all ten years.) During this time, one part of the presentation has stayed almost exactly the same.

After we’ve talked about books and the theme of the assembly, I do an activity where we come up with an amazing story idea. As part of this presentation, I pick seven kids to come up with me and suggest a super silly protagonist, a weird goal, three impossible obstacles, and consequences of success and failure. This is the best part of the presentation and I really have to be on my game because we have had almost every variation you can imagine. The last one I remember involved a ball of gas and a bike pump who had to find Maui to help them put everyone to sleep while getting past a fire breathing dragon, a mysterious shadow, and a terrible allergy, after which they either had a dance party or the world broke into tiny bits. And that was pretty normal. In the past, we’ve had rainbow-farting Darth Vader, man-eating chipmunks, endless peanut butter slides, tons of lava, every variation of dragon, living taco mountains, and quite a bit of the aforementioned poop.

When I first stared doing this, I pretty much picked kids at random, or whoever had their hand raised the highest. But over time, I’ve sort of developed a sixth sense for finding the kids who need that moment in the spotlight. My wife and I have been doing this long enough that she often tells me that she knew who I was going to pick even before I did. My Mom passed away a few years ago, but before she did, she watched my assemblies at least fifty times, and since her death I’ve often had a strong prompting that she is guiding me to a child who needs to take part.

Sometimes it’s the kids no one is sitting next to. Sometimes it’s the kid who is sitting beside the teacher. Sometimes it’s the boy who was on the bench outside the office when I came in. Other times it’s the girl who eyes are almost burning with intensity as soon as we talk about the power of stories. I’m sure I don’t always get them right, but I can say that I’ve received a lot of messages from teachers, librarians, or principals, telling me about the affect being chosen had on a student who I selected–from the girl in the wheelchair who ended up deciding to be in the school play to the boys who wrote in class for the first time.

Once we did an event at a city library. Afterwards, we had a long line of people getting books, posters, and bookmarks signed. One girl came up to get a poster and just lingered around the area by herself, watching from a distance until we were finishing up. As clearly as if she was standing there beside me, I heard my mom say, “Give her a book.” I always do what my mom says, (mostly to make up for the fact that I almost never did what she said when I was younger) so I gathered up one of each of my books and asked the girl which one she would like. She quickly shook her head and said, “I can’t buy one. I don’t have any money.” I told her it was a gift from my wife and me, and she just lit up the whole room with her huge smile. That night, as we were driving home, we received an e-mail from her mother. It turned out that day was the girl’s birthday and she’d been talking about me and my books all week, but they didn’t have any money to buy one because she hadn’t been paid yet. She went on and on about how much it meant to her and her daughter. My wife and I tried not to cry and failed miserably. In the words of Jude Law from The Holiday, “I’m a major weeper.”

One student in particular though will always be with me. This was toward the end of an especially long tour. My wife was home with the kids and I hadn’t seen them in a couple of weeks. I was in a K-6 school doing my normal assembly and kept noticing a boy sitting near the teachers who was much bigger than the other kids. Part of the reason I noticed him was because he was so big, but the other part was how intently he was watching me. His expression was almost completely blank the whole time, but you could tell he was taking in every word.

I was pretty sure he was neurodiverse, and based on past experiences I also knew he might not be capable of taking part in the assembly. But I kept getting this strong impression to call him up. I knew that even if he wasn’t able to fully take part, I could work with him. As soon as I asked for obstacles, his hand shot straight up. When I selected him to join me there was a stir among the teachers around him and one of them walked up beside him, whispering in his ear. I signaled to her that we were okay, and I had him be the last obstacle, which meant I would be near him the whole time.

When it was his turn, I whispered, “Do you have an obstacle?”

He nodded intently with that same blank expression and whispered back, “Obstacles get in the way.” That was an exact quote from my presentation. He had been listening and retaining. I was so happy.

“Would you like to be a dragon, or a monster, or a thunderstorm?”

He shook his head. “A giant pickle.”

Can I just say that he was the best giant pickle of all time? And the kids in the audience roared with laughter and approval. It was totally his time to shine. When we finished the story, I gave each of my helpers a signed poster. As I gave the boy his poster, you would have thought I’d given him the holy grail. He carried it carefully back to his seat and every kid around him leaned in for a closer look. For the rest of the assembly, every time I glanced in his direction, he was petting that folded poster as gently as a kitten.

Somehow I managed not to lose it in front of the kids. (Major weeper, remember.) But once I was outside and driving to the next school, I called my wife and tried to tell her what happened, and, of course, I totally broke down to the point that I had to pull over to the side of the road.

I’ve done thousands of assemblies since then. I’ve never heard anything more about that student, and I have no idea if that day affected him anywhere near as much as it did me. But since then, it doesn’t matter if I have thousands of people show up to an event or a single family, I always look for the one person I need to reach, because for me, that’s the best part of doing author events.