Stephen Shashkan visited last evening for the school year's first Family Reading Night. Earlier in the day, the custodian asked if we really needed 100 chairs, and it turned out we really did! The eager audience loved his stickered guitar (and were welcome to add stickers of their own). Steve traced his journey to becoming a children's author and illustrator from the books read to him by his dad to the cartoons he watched on Saturday mornings to the comics he bought and read to his formal education at the Rhode Island School of Design. Along the way, we sang songs, shared our own favorites, participated in a squiggle drawing exercise, wrote new words for "Down By the Bay", listened to him read A Dog is a Dog, and laughed a great deal. He did a fabulous job of demonstrating how the things he did and loved as a child and young person have shaped what he does as an adult. All the children departed with dog masks and minds filled with possibilities.
What a wonderful evening...entertaining, informative, and instructive. What better place to be...a place where laughter is frequent.
ReplyDeleteBeen gone for a few days up to Grand Marais. Great fall colors but now have to catch up!!