Matt Tavares Author Visit

Last week we were lucky enough to have Matt Tavares visit 3rd and 4th graders in the library! There is a committee in our district that works to bring PTO-funded enrichment programs to our schools. They bring in all sorts of presentations including this particular one so it was a happy surprise when I found out Matt would be visiting our students.

In preparation for his visit, the classroom teachers read a selection of his books. In the library, we explored his website, blog, book trailers, interviews, and the books we had in our collection. What I especially loved about having an author/illustrator like Matt visit is that he has a very wide range of books. He has illustrated fun, lighthearted picture books like The Gingerbread Pirates and worked on more serious, in-depth nonfiction books like Lady Liberty. He also has a lot of appeal in our neck of the woods because many of the books he has written and illustrated are about baseball and the Red Sox!

Here is Matt talking about his first picture book, Zachary's Ball (please excuse my terrible phone pics).

This was one of my favorite parts of the presentation. We got a sneak peek of Matt's new book, Growing Up Pedro. We got to see clips and pictures from Matt's research trip to the Dominican Republic and the inspiration behind some of the images in the book. I loved that he does so many different types of research and connected to that when talking about his books.

After talking all about the writing process, including showing what his writing looks like after it comes back from his editor, Matt gave a drawing demo using some of the kids as models. They loved it! These pictures will be hanging in our library as soon as the book fair is over.

Thanks again for inspiring our young authors and illustrators, Matt!