3rd Gade Q & A

My son’s teacher asked me to come in to speak to the two 3rd grade classes at Buckley Country Day School this morning. After reading Andrew Smith’s column on going to a high school class for Q & A I have to say I wasnt as sure what to expect from a group of 8 and 9 year olds. Okay. That’s not true. I’ve been to his class before and his teacher is a wonderful reading and writing teacher who keeps the class mayhem to a minimum  so I knew the class would be behaved but I was not quite prepared for how focused they were and for how long they lasted.

Now I wasn’t there by myself. Another father who also happens to be an author – Paul O’Donnell, author of Man Up (a terriffic book) was also invited to speak so we shared the space and did a compare and contrast on fiction and non-fiction which, because Paul is so good and natural a speaker – came off well. Then we got to Q & A and man did they come up with some good questions. Here’s a few of them:

• How do you come up with the titles of your books?
• How many times did you have to rewrite your book?
• What do you do if a bookstore won’t take your book?
• Do you write only fiction? Non-fiction?
• What gave you the idea to write the book?
• Will they make a movie out of it?
• What happens to the books that a store doesn’t sell?
• Do you like to write books?