I met lots of enthusiastic and energetic readers/writers today – grades 5/6 students at the Cloverdale Branch and grades 2/3 students at the Newton Branch of the Surrey Libraries. Highlights included the girl who, in her sensory writing, described a cat’s  tongue as sounding “slurpy,” the grade 5 girl who told me she regularly reads 600-page books in three days, the boy who showed me the comic character he created, the grade 2 student who described my sensory writing game as “charades with words,” and two of the friendliest librarians around – my hosts for the day, Lucy and Mehj – thank you so much! Thanks also to the parent who took some pictures for me, and to all the parents and teachers who did the 30-minute walk with the students from the schools to the libraries. Unfortunately, I don’t have the name of the actual schools, but I had so much fun talking about books and writing with all of you! In fact, I went half an hour overtime with the older group who were keen to share their writing, but wanted me to read it aloud for them… remember being 11?

I include my grade 2 class picture in my PowerPoint to illustrate the fact that the kids you know when you’re young affect your life forever after – I can remember all my grade 2 classmates’ names except for a couple, even though I haven’t seen most of them in decades. Some of those kids (or at least some of their behaviors) made it into The Power of Harmony. The moral of the story – be nice when you’re young (or old) so people will have fond memories of you:)

And finally, I took a drive out to White Rock for dinner and found these two plump gulls waiting for the rain. My big wish now is that tonight my brain will adjust for the four-hour time change and won’t think it’s time to wake up at 2:00 am like it did last night!