Letters from the 4th grade class

Last week I received a huge manila (not vanilla) envelope full of letters (about 100!) from the 4th grade class at Centennial Academy of Fine Arts Education.  I was so touched I felt like crying.  It was so amazing for me to read them and see that I had actually “gotten through” to them and that they understood and were enthusiastic about what I had spoke with them about.  It was fascinating to me to see which things stuck with the children.  One of the big ones was that I mentioned that one author I know (Sara C. Roethle) has a goal to write 7,000 words a day!  (My personal goal is 4,000).  Many of the kids asked if I had ever read The Chronicles of Narnia.  Obviously it made an impact on those children that had read it!  A couple of them asked what my next book would be about, which was difficult to answer without giving away too much not only from the second book, but from the first for those that haven’t read it yet.

The number one thing that resonated with the children was how important it is to nourish your imagination; to gain inspiration from other books, music, artwork, poetry, sculptures, and dancing (yes, dancing).  And how I believe that just like there is a nation in which we live in, there is also a place called imagiNation where all the stories live before we write them.  And that when stories “pop” into our minds they’re coming from imagiNation.

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I thought it would be fun to respond by reading all (yes all) of the letters and answering the questions in a YouTube video.  I was not expecting it to be 50 minutes long.  I think that’s too far long (especially for 4th graders) so I wrote the teacher back an email with my answers to the questions.