School Visits--Orchards, Bentos and Cupcakes in Massachusetts and Maine

I've just wrapped up two weeks of school visits in Massachusetts and Maine and am soon to return to Japan. This wonderful series of visits focusing on Orchards resulted after I received an invitation by a middle school librarian to be the featured speaker for a Reading Reality unit in which all grade 8 students selected from a list of books, including Orchards, that with various social issues. Thanks to that one librarian, I was also invited to visit seven other Massachusetts schools, zapping around the state from eastern MA to western MA to Worcester, and I was able to squeeze in a visit to a school in Maine. During the two weekends between visits, two Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction launch events were held: the Tomo launch in Boston and the Tomo launch in New York City. 

By the end of the two-week tour, I'd grown to love the GPS in my rental car and had learned that I needed .5 liters of water, ideally not cold, for every hour of speaking. But everything went smoothly, Route 128 traffic notwithstanding, and not once did the technology fail.

Whether grade 6 or grade 12, inner city or posh suburb, student questions were at turns insightful, challenging, unique and fun, and all the student and teacher responses to Orchards inspired me and motivated me day after day. Teachers had created units around the book and elaborate lesson plans, and students had written verse and letters in advance of my visits.

One of my favorite sessions was for an International Cuisine class on the art of making bento--Japanese boxed lunches:

Preparations set, ready for the students

Making Japanese tamagoyaki--egg roll up

Composing a bento

Results!

More incredible results

I particularly enjoyed an intensive interview discussion with a group of ESL students from Puerto Rico, the Ukraine, Haiti and Thailand.

Incredible interviewers!

And it was amazing to see the results of students developing their own scenes in verse

Students writing scenes in verse

Other favorite moments include:

• Hearing Orchards response poems movingly read to me one by one
  
• After sessions, students bringing me poems or stories they'd written privately
• Meeting students from all over--including Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Japan 
• Meeting librarians who love and understand and booktalk YA lit to English classes 
• Ordering from a lunch menu at one school and selecting "The Orchards" sandwich--apple slices and brie cheese
• A middle-schooler who was predicted to be trouble for me leaving a session saying, "I dunno. Now I'm thinking maybe I'll write a novel."
• Surprising hometown and Japan connections 
• Brand new creative commons libraries
• Creative uses of traditional libraries
• Lunches with teachers and librarians
• Lunches with students
• All the questions about Japan
• Cupcakes!

Thank you to all the schools on my tour. I hope to see you again!