Author Archives: Alexis

A PowerPoint Jam

Trying to find a PowerPoint solution minutes before our presentation was hair-raising!

Recently, I was doing a presentation at a conference for reading teachers with two other authors. The three of us had met twice to plan our session and had conversed via email. Two of us had pre-loaded our PowerPoint shows onto my netbook and gave them a test-drive. Our third partner lived a bit farther away, and didn’t have a chance to load her show. She also was going to arrive a little later than us, but in plenty of time for us to transfer her show from her flashdrive to the one computer.

Then – panic.

Her show, created on a Mac, wouldn’t load onto my PC. I’m enough of a TechoToddler to know what I didn’t know – and that was how to coax one device into talking with another. Then suddenly I remembered something my husband had said – that PowerPoint, without the bells and whistles, is really just a series of images.

Time was ticking away.

The solution was to convert her images into jpegs. But how? Luckily, my colleague’s husband was working from home. He found her file and exported it as individual jpegs and sent them via email.

The clock was ticking louder as each image downloaded.

But, just in the nick of time, she was able to transfer the images onto my netbook.

Instead of one click to launch a show as with PowerPoint, she had to go back to the desktop to find each image during her presentation. The good thing was she had already labeled them in numeric order, so they were easier to find than if each had been given a title. Finding the images became a bit of a game, and the participants were very understanding – they even joined in the treasure hunt for each slide.

So what was the Big Take-Away for me? When doing a group presentation, load and rehearse everyone’s show before leaving home. And don’t panic if things don’t go as expected. Options fly out of your head when your adrenaline is surging and you’re in flight mode. Have a back-up plan in place.

All's well that ends well. Michelle Markel, Mary Ann Fraser & Alexis O'Neill breathing easier post-presentation.

Oh – and remember, if all else fails, talking was invented before PowerPoint. It’s okay to just do your presentation, painting pictures out loud with words.

What Teachers Want to Hear

Author talks are a staple at professional reading and library conferences such as the California Reading Association conference coming up this weekend in Riverside, California or the California School Library Association conference in Sacramento in November. I did a quick survey at a board meeting of the Ventura County Reading Association, asking teachers, “What do you want to hear when you attend an author presentation?” Here’s their list: (in no particular order):

Synopses of the author’s books
The author’s writing process
How they got started (and what they were before they became authors)
Inside stories about specific books
Inspiration
Rejection
Rough drafts
Revisions
Perseverance
Author/illustrator relationship
Anything fun we can share with our students when we tell them we met a real live author!

When you craft your next author talk, keep these topics in mind if you want to be a hit with the teachers or librarians in your audience.

Authors pictured: Kate Hovey, Greg Trine, Barbara Bietz, Carol Heyer, Michelle Markel, and Mark London Williams at a recent CSLA conference.

Watching Authors in Action

Watching other authors in action is a great way to pick up presentation tips. And at the upcoming 58th Annual Breakfast with the Authors event in Santa Barbara on Saturday, I’ll not only experience a keynote talk by Susan Patron, but I’ll see & hear how 11 other authors deliver a 2-minute talk on the topic of “Becoming Lucky: Taking Chances.” (Yes! TWO minutes!) Now this is a speaking challenge indeed – and I’m still working on how I’m going to do this. (Hmmm. I wonder if the organizers will have a hook for long-winded authors?)

Authors Greg Trine, Alexis O'Neill, Mary Ann Fraser and Amy Koss did a showcase together at the Ventura County Reading Association's Book Love event.

Just last weekend, I was at two different events where I saw authors in action. One was at a bookstore signing with five other picture book authors. The other was at a reading association event where four of us, representing picture books through YA, did a showcase. I love observing the different ways my colleagues successfully connect with an audience. Some authors are noisy, others are quiet. Some authors connect though humor, others through interesting anecdotes, still others with compelling back stories about the making of their books. As different as the authors may be personality-wise, they share some significant commonalities: they make eye contact with their audience. They smile. They don’t talk at the audience – they seem to be having a conversation with them. They enjoy being where they are.

Keep your antennae up for author events at your local bookstores and libraries and attend whenever you can. When you tune into how an author connects with you, you’ll have a better idea of how you might connect with your audiences, too.

Props: Make ’em BIG!

A few years ago, author/illustrator Marianne Wallace had an assembly challenge. Like most authors who present in elementary schools, she would usually be placed in a large multipurpose room to do three assemblies for grades K-6. Audience sizes might range from 150 per session in small schools to 250-350 per session in the larger schools.

With nature the subject of her books, Marianne had gathered many life-sized props to illustrate her program. But she soon discovered that the kids in the back of the room could barely see them. So she decided to exaggerate the size of the props to dramatize her points, and suddenly her program popped into place.

Here’s Marianne Wallace herself to tell you (and show you) what she did.

This image shows an actual size tarantula and mega-sized one. In presentations, I show the smaller one against my hand for the actual size of some of the biggest of the real tarantulas and then I use the mega sized one to “illustrate” the rest of my talk.

I illustrated a book about the rock cycle and the large rock is made of painted foam rubber (latex wall paint and foam from an upholstery/ fabric store) and is the exact size of a real rock I got from the Sierra to do the illustrations in the book. But I tell the kids the actual big rock is too heavy to cart around (which it is). The smaller round granite rock is real and represents the rounder rock in the story.

The smaller rubber snake is a garter snake — great actual size, but too thin and small. The fatter, fake rattlesnake always works better and is a bonus since it is also actual size. Normally, I would wear a white or light plain blouse so the props would show up better.

I even have large bugs as props. I mean, an ant? Kinda hard to show one of those in actual size! But even with their large size, I think they’re too small for a cafeteria presentation so I rarely used them. Although I usually wear a white shirt to do presentations so my animal/plant props show up better, I thought I’d send this shot of the bugs against a print shirt. They’re often harder to see but in this case not so much for some reason.

Both are pine cones, although from different species. I use the smaller pine cones for more intimate groups.

Also – I needed a hawk to explain how they swoop down on small prairie dogs. So I got a plastic hawk kite. It rolled up fairly small when not in use and was very lightweight. You can often find butterfly kites for sale, so there might be other animal kites as well that open up into huge props.

The problem with large props is primarily transporting them. I pile 3 plastic bins on a dolly when I do a full presentation. And since weight is a concern with natural objects, I favor plastic and stuffed animals. The plastic animals, which I got over a period of years, came from a variety of places such as Toys R Us, party stores, zoo or museum gift shops and Disneyland.

Thanks Marianne for these creative solutions to finding, making and sharing props with a multipurpose room audience!

Props: Ears & Noses & Kids

A wonderful way to engage kids in your presentation is by using props. A friend of mine has a collection of plush puppets representing each of the animal characters in her books. These are a terrific way to show kids attributes of the animals and can work well in a small library or classroom setting. But there are two issues when you give puppets to kids to help you act out your story in a larger venue:

1. In a large auditorium, puppets don’t make much of an impact beyond the first three rows

2. When you give puppets to kids, kids are fascinated with the mouths and usually fiddle with them as they try to make them “talk” – to each other or to the audience – and usually with their own improvisations. This is great for drama class, but may not advance the story you’re trying to share!

Even the smallest bit of costume helps kids transform into book characters. Watch for sales around Halloween.

A more meaningful way to get interaction is by inviting the kids to become the animals themselves. Give each kid a bit of costume that represents the animal – ears on a headband, a nose, a tail. When you choose a volunteer, invite him or her to show the audience how that animal walks, what kind of noise it makes. Encourage them to use their whole body as they do this. Once you have your volunteers on stage, you can launch into your story using kids as the main characters.

Watch for costume sales close to Halloween. It’s a great time to pick up all sorts of props that can help you tell your story on stage with a bit of color!

TIP: Use Question Cards for Your Youngest Audience

For Question Cards, you can use plain index cards or your promotional postcards.

Have you ever had this happen? You’re in a room with first graders. You say to the kids, “Do you have any questions?” You call on an enthusiastic hand-raiser who says, “I like your shoes.” The next kid says, “I like your books.” The teacher interrupts with, “Now children, that’s a statement. You need to ask a question.” So, the next kid asks, “What’s your favorite color?” and every question after that begins with “What’s your favorite . . .” The warm fuzziness of the author moment is gone, and you have become the object of a dry language arts lesson.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some great Q & A sessions with younger kids, especially when they’ve read my books and have seen me in assembly. But things can go off-track fast if you’re not on alert.

Here’s an emergency strategy for doing a Q & A with your younger audiences.

On note cards (or postcards), write questions in advance of your visit – questions that you’d like to answer. Some questions can be serious (“Where do you get your ideas?”), others can be fun (“What pets did you have as a kid?” “What’s the silliest joke you ever heard?”) If you have a hard time coming up with kid-friendly questions, have a brainstorming session with your writers group and make up a batch of 30 together. (Hint: If you print a sheet of questions off on sticky labels, you won’t have to write them each time you do this activity!)

Put the questions in a hat or container. Have kids, in turn, draw a Question Card from the hat. Let each kid stand beside you and share the spotlight as you read the question aloud and give your answer.

You might also consider letting individual kids (or the class) keep the cards that are drawn out, autographing the cards at the end of the session. And if you have each question on your promotional postcard, the Question Cards turn into perfect souvenirs. You can be sure that when the cards go out the door, there’ll be lots for the class to talk about!

SKYPE: Great Tool for MG & YA Authors

Scheduling author visits in middle schools and high schools where classes change hourly is challenging, as is finding funding for large assemblies. But Skyping an author is a low-cost alternative for schools (with a great convenience factor for authors) that can offers flexible small-group sessions that can satisfy both the audience and the authors.

For an interesting article about doing virtual visits using Skype, check out Kate Messner’s piece in School Library Journal. She has pulled lots of great examples from authors and illustrators, showing how they use Skype for small group interactive visits, book club discussions, writing classes and critiquing sessions.

I think that Skype has great potential for those of you who are middle grade and young adult novelists. You can pitch a one-hour session with a single class or two together to keep the intimacy factor. And if this is something you really want to get into, you can get your name listed at Skype An Author Network whose mission is to provide K-12 teachers and librarians with a way to connect authors, books, and young readers through virtual visits.

In addition to Kate’s article in SLJ, take a look at this piece, Virtual Visits, which originally appeared in my column, “The Truth About School Visits” in the SCBWI Bulletin.

Have any of you already experienced author visits via Skype? How has it worked for you?

4 Tips for the Perfect 15-Minute Luncheon Talk

Let’s say a local service organization has asked you to speak at their luncheon. You have 15 minutes in front of the group. You might ask, “What should I talk about?”

The better question is, “Who is in the audience and what do they want to know?” Think about what you can give to them that can help them with their dream.

Even if you’re talking to a room of high-paid bank executives, these folks are parents and grandparents who have spent many bedtimes reading books to their kids. And probably more than a few of them are harboring a dream of writing their own children’s book (in their spare time) and having it picked up by a publisher.

As you prepare your 15-minute talk, consider these four really helpful tips that the Assistance League of Fullerton (California) gives to presenters for the “Day with Authors” fundraising event that features both children’s and adult authors.

1) Authors who tend to sell the most books tell the best stories, be it about their current book, their body of work, themselves, or getting started in their writing careers. They cover all of these things to one degree or another during their presentation.

2) A key point is that the authors talk to the audience rather than read passages from their books exclusively. Unlike a book tour, our attendees may not be coming to hear you specifically; they are coming to participate in a full-day event featuring many authors. If you choose to read a passage from one of your books, make it brief. Attendees much prefer to hear you speak rather than read.

3) Think of your presentation in the same way you approach a book: plot, character, conflict, dialogue. You do not have to be a standup comedian or even a polished public speaker. It does help tremendously if you have a “story” to tell your audience that includes information about your latest work, your total body of work, your “themes”, the struggles you encountered on your way to becoming a published author. The audience likes to know an appropriate amount about you as a person – past as well as present.

4) A good story, told in a human, genuine way, trumps a polished presentation with the audience. If you make a mistake, point to it, laugh and move on. You are already doing something braver than most people, and that is talking in front of an audience. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be you.

Case Study: Designing a Program for First and Second Graders

Recently, author Elizabeth Van Steenwyk, who usually talks to intermediate audiences, asked me for advice:

“I’ve got a school visit scheduled in October . . . I’ll be speaking to fifth graders, but that’s not what has me worried. The principal wants me to talk to first and second graders as well . . . What do you suggest? Sing? Dance? My tap shoes are rusty.”

Kids love books about animals!

Among her many books, I discovered that has two book starring dogs – and one is a nonfiction picture book, First Dog Fala, published by Peachtree in 2008. Fala, a Scottish terrier, was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s loyal dog. Perfect! Kids love animals and can really relate to stories about pets.

This is what we came up with in our brainstorming session:

Length of presentation: 30 minutes. (She could ask for 40 minutes and will have 30 minutes by the time the kids file in and get settled.)

Focus: Showing the difference between a real story (nonfiction) and a made-up story (fiction).

Sub-focus: How an author finds facts and puts them together to make an interesting book for readers.

Big-Picture Audience Take-Away: The sheer joy of learning more about a subject that you love – in this case, dogs!

Making it 3-D: By presenting material on both the visual and auditory level, Elizabeth will reach more kids (and adults, too) and have more fun in the process. Here are some image possibilities she can use as props and in her PowerPoint show (some of this will require contacting the school ahead of time, but the pay-off will be terrific)

Table props:
- Stuffed animals, the author’s books
Music:
- As kids file in, play a series of songs that feature dogs
Images
- Famous dogs (of presidents, stars, heroes, or heroic dogs, etc.)
- Illustrator’s dog (now and “back then”)
- Author with her dog or dogs (especially on when author was a kid)
- Images from the books including the covers (of course)
- Historic photos used in research
- Sketches from illustrator(s) with perhaps reference photos that they used.
- Dogs of the school’s employees such as the principal, teachers, librarian, custodian, lunch ladies, etc. These can be clicked through fairly fast or even put to music. The kids will love this! Even if she includes just two or three photos, it will “humanize” the folks at the school for the kids and give conversation starters for a long time to come.

Classroom Connection:

Before the author visit
- Ask the teachers or librarian to read the books aloud that will be featured in the assembly.
- Encourage the teachers to have kids share stories, draw pictures or share photos of their own dogs (or a dog they know if they don’t have one as a pet) and perhaps make a booklet or a bulletin board display.
- For class discussion, send clips related to President Obama’s family’s quest to find a pet dog.
After the author visit
- Invite kids to write letters to Elizabeth, telling about their favorite part of the assembly, what tips they learned, or share a story about one of their pets. This kind of authentic writing experience is priceless – and gives kids practice in writing friendly letters.
- Leave behind a bibliography of picture books – both nonfiction and fiction – that feature dogs.

These are just a few of the many ways that Elizabeth – or any author for that matter — can make this a great experience for first and second graders. She still has some shaping to do to find her assembly “story arc,” but the visuals can guide her.

If you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear them! After all, our presentations are always a work-in-progress – right?!

BIO NOTE: In addition to First Dog Fala, Elizabeth Van Steenwyk is the author of Three Dog Winter, a middle grade novel, countless short stories and two Los Angeles Times stories about dogs, and over 70 books for children. Two of her books were made into films: The Best Horse and Three Dog Winter.

Data Projectors for PowerPoint Shows – Cost, Set-up & Alternatives

I appreciated the specific questions about my data projector that Jennifer and Mara asked in my last post. Because my response became a bit long, I decided to put it in its own post. Thanks for the great questions! (And Jennifer, I’m a techno-toddler, so if I can do this, you can, too!)

I love how skinny my Casio is.

What model do you use and how much does it cost? I’m using a Casio Data Projector XJ-S35, 2000 lumens with 2000-hour lamp life (that means if you were to do 4 hour-long presentations per school visit and did 50 visits per year, the bulb would last 10 years.) I bought it from ProjectorPeople in 2006 and it cost me about $1700 back then. Replacement bulbs are $395.00. But wait! Don’t despair! Casio has a new model, The Casio Green Slim XJ-A145U that uses new lamp technology (no more mercury bulbs) so the lamp will never need replacement, and the price of the projector is about $999.00. It’s reliable, and the expense is relative. It’s been totally worth it to me. For helpful information, check out “How to Buy a Projector” in PC Magazine. (Disclaimer: I’m not an employee of Casio or The Projector People, just a satisfied customer!)

Brightness? Brightness is measured in lumens. Under 1000 lumens requires a totally dark room. My Casio has 2000 lumens. It works great in multipurpose rooms that are “light-challenged” as in windows everywhere and not a curtain in sight.

Basic set-up: computer, data projector, black power cord for projector, and the blue-ended cord that connects your computer to the projector. I also bring along the white power strip (just in case!) Set up time? Fast!

Ease of set-up? After you do it a couple of times, it’s a piece of cake. Five minutes tops if you’re using your own equipment and not relying on the school’s set-up.

I keep my flash drive on a key chain so I can find it faster.

Alternatives to owning your own projector: First, be sure the school you’re visiting has PowerPoint installed on their equipment. Then 1) you can bring your PowerPoint show on a flash drive and download it onto a school computer (this will retain any fancy formatting you’ve done in PowerPoint like transitions); 2) Convert your PowerPoint to jpegs on a flash drive and plug it into a projector that has a USB port (this acts as a slide show, so fancy transitions are gone) or 3) bring your own computer, on which you’ve loaded your show, that the school’s projector will hook to. If you have a Mac laptop, you may need a Mac-to-VGA adaptor.

What if there’s equipment failure and no visuals? Dance! Seriously – one time, I was in a multipurpose room where the light was so bright, no images were visible. If you do enough school visits, this will happen eventually. So be ready to pull out your storytelling skills, grab your props and get on with the show.

Parting advice: Arrive early for set-up. Be prepared for the worst and consider it a gift from the heavens when everything goes as planned.

School Visit Experts

Creating Programs That Kids, Teachers & Librarians Love