Jon Agee is a fantastic speaker, who was so thoroughly engaging I almost forgot that I needed to step in towards the end so we could allow time for questions. The kids loved his drawings and his stories. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep his books on the shelves!
What's so wonderful about Jon is that unlike a lot of authors, he illustrates his own books. This makes his talks unique because he illustrates while he talks to the kids, which really helped at my school where a portion of the children don't speak English as a first language. They were able to get lost in his pictures and follow his stories through them.
His stories are so funny and captivating that even my youngest students (4-6yrs) stayed engaged for almost an hour. In the end, it was Jon who tired before the kids did! Poor man looked exhausted! I don't blame him. It was VERY hot in our little amphitheater.
It's lunch time now and my library is full of kids who can't stop talking about him. They are drawing him pictures and making thank you cards. I'm lucky that my students love reading so it wasn't hard to get them interested in having an author come to speak to them. But even for those who aren't die hard readers, Jon's visit has opened up a door into books for them. And for that I can't thank him enough.
(photo from www.jonagee.com)
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