Keep reading, writing and drawing and definitely keep using your imagination.
Those were the key messages that longtime children’s author Susan Stevens Crummel passed along to a fired-up audience Monday at Hay Branch Elementary School.
The start of March marks Read Across America Day, the birthday of Dr. Seuss, and incidentally the birthday of Fort Worth-based Crummel, a Bluebonnet Book Award winner and special frequent guest in Killeen ISD.
As she’s done many times before, the former high school math teacher turned author and presenter, kept students listening and laughing as she brought to life her hilarious characters, mostly animals that act a lot like humans.
All across Killeen ISD, schools will host family reading and literacy events and welcome community readers to share stories with children.
It was more than 20 years ago, Crummel said she crossed paths with Carolyn Dugger, the longtime principal at Harker Heights Elementary School. Two years ago, the author visited Hay Branch for the first time when Dugger took the top post there.
For three sessions Monday, Crummel told portions of stories from her books, mostly from memory while showing slides of pages from her books.
Sometimes she used puppets and her own silly voices to bring the tales to life. Other times, she brought students up front to take on the identity of characters like a bear, hare and fox.
Her latest book, The Little Good Wolf, is her idea of what would happen if the Big, Bad Wolf had a son who was good and needed to go to Bad Wolf School to learn to be bad.
Her first book, Cook A Doodle Doo, written in tandem with her sister, illustrator Janet Stevens, won the Texas Bluebonnet Award and set Crummel on a new career path writing books full time.
It also sent her to China, Saudi Arabia, all over the US and to the White House, among other places.
Hay Branch second-grade teacher Carol Gould said it is a powerful experience for students to meet an author in person.
“Most kids don’t like to write, so I think by making her books come alive and making them exciting and telling them where her ideas came from helps make them want to be creative writers,” the teacher said.
“Just letting them know that authors are real. We read books all the time. We talk about the author and the author’s purpose for this writing. To actually see an author. I think that was big for them.”
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/killeenisd/albums/72177720332329844