Tag: author visits

New Children’s Nonfiction Book THE GREAT VOYAGERS: EARTH’S INTERGALACTIC AMBASSADORS

November 13, 2024 / Katie L. Carroll

Guess what? I have another new book out. It technically came out yesterday, but we’ll just pretend that I’m organized and have been properly marketing my new book release. It’s called THE GREAT VOYAGERS: EARTH’S INTERGALACTIC AMBASSADORS. If you or your kids enjoyed SELFIES FROM MARS, you’re gonna like this one too.

This book takes readers on a journey through the solar system all the way to interstellar space. The Voyager space probes are the farthest reaching human-made objects are have been out in space for more than 45 years! And wait until you read about the Golden Records. They really are quite the incredible NASA mission.

I’m really excited to have another STEM nonfiction books for kids to get excited about space. I recently did a school visit where I talked all about Opportunity’s incredible journey on the Red Planet and my process of writing, revising, and publishing SEFLIES FROM MARS. I can’t wait to bring THE GREAT VOYAGERS to classrooms as well.

What space mission should I write about next? I have a couple in mind, but I’d love to know what your favorites are.

Book blurb:

Take a grand tour through the outer planets and beyond the solar system with the NASA Voyager space probes. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were the first spacecraft to explore all the outer planets and the first human-made objects to reach interstellar space. They each hold a golden record with the sights, sounds, music, and languages of Earth. These great Voyagers continue to reach for the stars as Earth’s intergalactic ambassadors.

Purchase THE GREAT VOYAGERS at Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

School Visits, a Book Launch, and Dr. Seuss’s Birthday!

March 2, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

What better day than Dr. Seuss’s birthday than to celebrate how I’ve been living a creative life? And though I haven’t been writing in the drafting-a-new-book sense (my favorite kind of writing), I’ve been immersing myself in the creative life in other ways.

The reign of school visits ended last week. In less than three weeks, I taught eight writing workshops to more than 200 students, ranging from grades 4 to 7. This particular workshop is about where story ideas come from and includes a guided writing/thought exercise where the kids come up with their own story ideas. They never cease to amaze me with their thoughtfulness and creativity. The workshop is about inspiring kids, but I always come out inspired by them!

After one session, a 6th-grade girl walked down the hallway with me and shared a poem she had written about herself. It was lyrical, had a great cadence, and optimistic, a beautiful portrayal of herself. After another, nearly the entire 4th-grade class lined up with their scraps of papers and waited in line for my autograph, totally making me feel like a celebrity. Connecting with young readers and writers is 20160302_132004 magical! Plus, talking with the librarians and teachers who teach these kids everyday is informative and inspiring.

Monday the Connecticut Humanities and the authors and illustrators of THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER celebrated the hardcover and audio release of the book at a local library. It’s always fun to catch up with my Caper collaborators. I haven’t listened to the whole audio version yet, but what I did listen to was brilliantly narrated (listen to the Caper audiobook here).

Of course, I’ve been reading a lot. In particular, I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone of YA and reading adult books and non-fictions. And always, always, always reading to the boys. Last week I squeezed in visiting The Boy’s pre-school class for World Read Aloud Day. I’ll leave you with some of our favorite Seuss books.

First School Visit

June 21, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Don’t forget, voting opens today for the You Gotta Read blog cover contest. Elixir Bound is entry #10. I’d love to have your vote if you get a minute to check it out!

In other news, I had my first school visit last week. I did a presentation on creating characters. It was for a group of 8th graders (including my oldest nephew, who is also one of my writing buddies), less than a week before graduation. Uh oh! Seriously, though, they were great. They were attentive and I even got some student participation…when they had to. When I mentioned Katniss, one girl said fairly loudly, “Katnip!” And when I talked about Edward Cullen, there were some sighs of delight and a few shouts for team Jacob!

We had a bit of technological snafu when I couldn’t get my PowerPoint presentation to come up on their computer (still not sure why it wouldn’t recognize my files). So instead of having all the bullet points and pictures up on the big white board, they were just up on my laptop screen. Luckily the group and the classroom were on the small side, so they were able to see all the silly pics I created. Including when I put the teacher’s head on a certain famous villain! (The teacher is my friend’s mom, so she was cool with it.)

I was sweating a bit when with the computer stuff, but I had a backup so it worked out okay (for future visits, I think I’ll be prepared with even more ways to access my presentations). Still wish I had been able to give them the full effect, but they got the meat and potatoes…just not the full bells and whistles. The teacher asked some good questions in the Q&A part about revision techniques for the students and also on generating ideas for creative writing. I think I might come up with workshops for students about those topics.

For those of you who do school visits, how do you access your visuals during school visits?