Tom was the “featured” author at this school.  Every year they have a “Young Author’s Day”.  The children celebrate the writing that they have done through the school year. Here is Tom with Ann Grosjean, 1st grade teacher, who invited Tom to the school.

A Celebration of Writing

Since it was a celebration of writing most of the questions were on the writing process.  Tom told them that if they like to write and they start now, that they can call themselves writers.  They all loved that comment – so did the teachers.  They like the encouragement that Tom gave them for writing and they were pleased that they could call themselves writers.  He told them that it takes about a year to complete the writing process – from the first idea to getting the printed book.  He also told them about Kathy and how she rhymes the story and then Gretchen illustrates the story.  He then sends it to the publisher who then sends it on to the printer.  He told them that he writes about the rainforest because he loves it so much.  He’s never gotten writer’s block and he feels he hasn’t had writer’s block because he writes about what he loves and what he knows.  The inspiration for Spidy was the page where they are walking hand in tail.  He saw this once in Costa Rica.  A little boy walking along the side of the road with his spider monkey walking beside him – hand in tail.  This stayed in his mind and when it was time to write Spidy, the Spider Monkey, this was his inspiration and the story grew around it.

They wanted to know his writing system.  First he writes his ideas on 4×6 cards and then arranges and re-arranges these ideas on a board. This is called a Storyboard. Then he writes the story on the computer.

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