March 01

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A Recipe for Book Joy: Collaborative School & Public Library Author Visits by Eti Berland, Emily Day, Kelli Pilmer, Muffy Pinney & Alicia Wiechert

Posted by on March 1, 2024 in Pay It Forward | 6 Comments

In Grace Lin’s best-selling nonfiction book, Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, she shares that “every mouthful you eat from a Chinese take-out box was born of centuries of ingenuity, myths, and legend” (257). This groundbreaking book urges readers to recognize that our favorite dishes have fascinating and powerful origin stories. 

Like ingredients (and stories) come together to create a delightful sensory feast, it takes many people to come together to create something memorable, something magical, a story you’ll keep sharing long afterwards. 

Our community in Wilmette, Illinois came together to celebrate all things Grace Lin this past fall for an epic author visit that we’ll never forget. To create an experience bigger than all of us, it took all of us. We collaborated with our local school district’s Parent-Teacher Associations/Organizations, Technology and Library Media Services department, and public library to dream big and host Grace Lin. 

As the school librarians and public librarians, we thought we’d share our experience about the ways we worked together and the impact this experience has had on our community to celebrate our love of reading and one of our favorite children’s author-illustrators. By sharing our insights, we hope you get inspired to host a collaborative author visit in your community and gain some strategies to make it a resounding success. 

How did we work together? 

The Wilmette School District 39 librarians and the Wilmette Public Library have been meeting regularly for a few years to share ideas and to learn about what is happening in the community. Each year, the four D39 elementary schools plan an author visit, which is sponsored by each school’s PTA/PTOs. After their visit last year with Cynthia Lord, they mentioned to the Wilmette Public Library that they would love to work together to bring in an author for our community. The school librarians were interested in having Grace Lin visit the district; however, the cost to host her was prohibitive and not within the PTA/PTOs’ budget. The public library had been working to strengthen their connections and thought that hosting Grace would be a great partnership opportunity. The school librarians reached out to Grace’s event coordinator and were able to work out a two-day visit to the four elementary schools and an evening community event with the public library at the local junior high. The public librarians and school librarians frequently communicated throughout this process to loop each other in on the logistics and arrangements, and they met in person at the beginning of the school year to coordinate their plans. 

What did we do to prepare for Grace’s visit?

Preparation is key to get the most out of an author visit. When educators, kids and caregivers are familiar with an author’s work and have had opportunities to explore, discuss and create using their books, it creates a more meaningful learning experience. It also ensures that the author has a positive experience when people are knowledgeable about their books and are prepared to engage with their presentations. The school librarians added The Year of the Dog and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon to their 2024 Reading Rally list, a district-wide program for 4th grade readers, to encourage students to check out Grace’s books. 

The four K-4 elementary schools creatively found ways to celebrate and prepare for their author visit. Last year, the schools wrote a grant for permanent StoryWalks® to be installed outside in the school gardens. The schools each picked a different Grace Lin book to be highlighted in their StoryWalks®. The various StoryWalks® throughout the district invited students to engage in her books with their families and helped communicate her upcoming visit with the greater community. The librarians collaborated with their art teachers to prepare student created welcome signs at the schools. They also planned STEAM stations for students to explore during library classes to help build excitement for Grace’s visit. 

Below are some of the challenges they did:

  • Build a Mountain using Keva Planks to help Minli complete her journey
  • Program Bee Bots to follow the phases of the moon
  • Fold an origami fortune cookie and write your own fortune to put inside the cookie
  • Learn to use chopsticks 
  • Design a Dragon Kite  
  • Research the Zodiac animal that represents you based on your birth year
  • Color Grace Lin coloring & activity sheets

You can access the station links here: https://rb.gy/2ybcdx

At the public library, staff created a display of Grace Lin’s books that quickly emptied as the entire community explored and studied Grace’s work. They created a scavenger hunt spotlighting many of Grace’s book covers that offered an opportunity for young people to discover new titles, find their favorites, and experience the delight of finding the clues. Often kids would engage in conversations about the books and their experiences reading them at school – and of course, seek out copies to check out. They also hosted an outdoor StoryWalk® of Grace’s newest picture book, Once Upon a Book, which was co-written with Kate Messner, at a local park, which is the perfect tale to physically experience out in nature. They also hosted a special “Grace Lin Storytime and Craft” to help spread the word about the visit and get the community excited about seeing Grace in real life. Kids created their own scenes from upcycled books inspired by Once Upon a Book. 

They combined efforts to promote the author visit through their Communication departments, getting the word out through newsletters, emails, and social media. They worked hard to reach the larger community to invite them to the evening event with Grace, which was open to all. 

What happened during our school visits?  

Grace did two presentations at each school, for PreK-2 and 3-4 grade. Her presentations focused on Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival traditions and celebrations and she did a draw-along during each presentation. The draw-along was definitely a highlight of both presentations. Many students had previously watched her drawing videos from her website and were mesmerized to experience drawing with her in real-time. The draw-along also gave students a memorable souvenir from her visit. Students were highly engaged during the presentations. All of the pre-built excitement about Grace’s visit made her presentations especially meaningful. When Grace entered the schools, she was viewed as a “rock star” by the students; they were awestruck meeting such a famous author! Students also had the option to order autographed copies of her books from The Book Stall, our local independent bookstore, and many students took advantage of the opportunity to have a personalized book. Grace took her time with each personalization; she signed her name, used her name stamp, and did a drawing in each book she signed!

Grace’s PreK-2 grade presentation at the elementary schools was especially well-planned and was perfect for the younger age group! She read A Big Mooncake for Little Star and made the read aloud interactive by having students do various motions to help make a mooncake. She ended the presentations with a draw-along of a tiger or rabbit. The students were so proud of their artwork and loved learning to draw with Grace.

The third and fourth grade students loved learning more information about the Zodiac animals during the Lunar New Year presentation. It helped having students do the STEAM stations ahead of time to already be familiar with their Zodiac animal. Many students and teachers commented afterwards how they learned new facts about the Lunar New Year from Grace. The stories she told about the different animals during the presentation was captivating and learning to draw a dragon with Grace was icing on the cake! 

What happened during our community visit?

The community visit with Grace Lin was held at the local junior high’s auditorium, which has a much larger capacity than the public library auditorium, so they could welcome more people. 

The public library coordinated with Brenda Hsu, a Mandarin teacher at our local middle school and junior high, to invite young people to help with the author visit. Several tweens had the opportunity to read Grace’s author bio and introduce her to the audience. Involving young people in library programs makes them even more engaging and special. 

Grace began her presentation by sharing an overview of her newest book, Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, to a packed auditorium of fans who were fascinated to learn about the origin stories of some of our favorite dishes. She brought the story of chow mein to life by sharing a reader’s theater performance of the story. Brenda Hsu enlisted her students as performers for the reader’s theater, who kindly volunteered to participate. She divided up the parts with her students before the visit  – and coordinated with them and their caregivers to have them come to the auditorium ahead of time to check in. 

Grace gave each of the kids a fabulous mask of the character they were playing, which included their lines on the inside. Grace is a captivating storyteller, narrating this riveting story, and artfully cueing each of the characters to share their lines. She also included opportunities for the audience – as the villagers – to participate and respond to the unfolding events. The tweens did a fantastic job as reader’s theater performers, well-prepared to participate and have fun with the audience. It was clear that everyone was having a great time. 

After the reader’s theater performance, Grace hosted a draw along activity to teach everyone how to draw a Chinese dragon. She offered a step-by-step tutorial that helped show how everyone can make art. Staff distributed golf pencils and a template when people entered the auditorium, as well as ran around the room giving out supplies to anyone they missed. It was fantastic seeing caregivers and kids drawing along together and being creative. They made some pretty rad dragons! 

They then opened up the conversation for a Q&A with the audience. The kids had so many brilliant questions for Grace, and were only able to ask a couple of them before time ran out. They then hosted a book signing, in collaboration with The Book Stall. People were thrilled to have the opportunity to meet Grace and share how much her work meant to them. Grace patiently signed hundreds of books, answered more questions from young readers, and took pictures with them. (And the next day she had a full day of visits at two more schools!)  

During and long after this event, people have shared how much they enjoyed this program, which truly engaged our multi-generational audience, and how grateful they were to the school district and public library for hosting it. 

It meant so much to us to have our community come together to celebrate the power of sharing stories. That’s truly a recipe for book joy!  

What did we learn from this experience? 

This ambitious experience was months in the making, going as far back as last winter. It takes a lot of planning, communication, coordination, and buy-in from all stakeholders, including the PTA/PTOs who sponsored her visit, to make it happen. It was also an incredible opportunity to work together with our school and public library colleagues. With our powers combined, there’s nothing we can’t do! 

It is especially important to recognize the support of our leadership, whether from our administration, superintendent, director, boards, etc., who want experiences like this for our community and will back our efforts to make it happen. 

Our community has been over the moon about this experience and their feedback is vital to ensure we can offer more community experiences. Make sure to collect this feedback to share with your leadership as data to support future plans. 

If you ever have the chance to see Grace Lin present, definitely say yes!

Author Bios

Eti Berland (she/her) is the Youth Services School Engagement Librarian at Wilmette Public Library. She moderates social media for the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. She has worked as a middle school and high school teacher, academic librarian and college instructor, teachers’ center facilitator, and curriculum developer.  She served on the 2015 Newbery Committee and the 2018 Odyssey Award Selection Committee. She has also been on the Illinois Rebecca Caudill Evaluator’s Committee and Nominating Committee. She is a member of the Illinois Libraries Present Programming Committee. She is currently the co-chair of the Graphic Novel and Comics Roundtable’s Addressing Challenges committee. You can find Eti on Instagram at @etiberland. 

Emily Day (she/her) is the K-4 Library Information Specialist at Central School in Wilmette, IL. This is her 3rd year in Wilmette and 17th year teaching. After receiving a M. Ed in Elementary Education from DePaul University, she taught third grade for two years and was the librarian for nine years at a K-8 Chicago Public School in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. During her time with Chicago Public Schools, she also received her M.S. in Library and Information Science from Chicago State University. Emily later went on to serve as the librarian at an elementary building in the Orland Park school district for 3 years. Just prior to her current library position, she worked with the American Library Association as a content manager in their conference services department. She has been at Central School in Wilmette for the past 3 years. 

Kelli Pilmer (she/her) is the K-4 Library Information Specialist at McKenzie Elementary School in Wilmette, IL. This is her 3rd year in Wilmette and 13th year teaching. After receiving a B.A. in Elementary Education from Augustana University in Sioux Falls, S.D. After she received this degree she taught in the state of South Dakota for four years and then left to pursue her career in Plainfield, Illinois where she spent 6 more years. During her time in Plainfield, she obtained her M. Ed. in Curriculum Technology and Instruction from American College of Education. She obtained her Library Science Endorsement shortly after. She has been in the Media Center/ Library setting for the last 5 years of her career and 3 of those years were spent at McKenzie. 

Muffy Pinney (she/her) is the K-4 Library Information Specialist at Harper Elementary School in Wilmette, IL. This is her 24th year in Wilmette and 27th year teaching. After receiving a B.S. in Elementary Education from Butler University, she taught technology for 18 years in Indianapolis, IN, Berwyn, IL, and Wilmette, IL. She has a M. Ed in Curriculum, Technology, and Education reform from the University of Illinois and Library Certification from National Louis University. She has been in the Harper Library position for the last 9 years.

Alicia Wiechert (she/her) is the K-4 Library Information Specialist at Romona Elementary School in Wilmette, IL. This is her 13th year at Romona and 17th year teaching. After receiving a B.A. in Elementary Education from Saint Louis University, she taught first/second grade in a multiage class and middle school reading and language arts for several years in St. Louis, MO and Champaign, IL. She has a M. Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction, an endorsement in reading, and a M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois.