How does it make you feel?

Where do you get your ideas?
How long does it take you to write a book?
When did you decide to become an author?
 

These are all classic questions authors get when they visit elementary schools, and Traci Sorell tackled them head on in her presentation to third and fourth grade this morning.
 

With those basic questions answered, students leaned into emotions during their Q&A:
 

How do you feel when you write? (like a puzzle is coming together)

 

What book do you feel most connected with? (Being Home)
 

What is your favorite part of writing a book? (when it goes into the world)
 

Does someone inspire you? (her son Carlos)
 

Do you like the She Persisted series? (yes!)
 

Third and fourth grades were the perfect group to welcome Sorell to Gordon’s campus. Sorell’s work includes many picture book biographies, which are a cornerstone of Gordon’s second grade curriculum, and they are set in North American Indigenous communities, which figure into the third grade’s yearlong study of Southeast New England’s Indigenous cultures.
 

Sorrel’s next workshop was a close study of the research and planning that went into Mascot, a novel-in-verse she wrote with Charles Waters. The seventh graders in the room had read and discussed the book, which tells the story of a community’s debate over a high school mascot. While it is fiction, the book drew on deep research ranging from the history of Indigenous people as mascots, the tactics of community activism and the subtleties of El Salvadorean slang to the demographics of public high schools in Maryland and the rhythms of contemporary school calendars. For these seventh graders, who are currently in the middle of writing their first novels, it was a valuable lesson in how the little details are necessary to make a story come alive.

 

Sorell is here as the eighteenth annual Karla Harry Visiting Author, working with all three divisions in a visit that coincides with Gordon’s annual Book Fair. While she is here, Sorrell is also hosting a workshop for creators in the local Indigenous community. Hosted in collaboration with the Tomaquag Museum, the workshop will explore voice and visibility and the path to creating published works by Indigenous authors. 

 

Traci Sorell was one of several visiting authors who were part of this year's Book Fair.

A look at Cynthia Levinson's presentation

A look at Valerie Bolling's visit