Confratute 2015

Last week I was at the UConn Co-op for a bookstore visit followed by a conversation with the amazing Susannah Richards, as part of the Confratute program.

Here’s Susannah!

Susannah is on the faculty at Eastern Connecticut State University, and she knows everything there is to know about children’s literature, and she knows everyone there is to know who is involved in the world of kid lit. She’s been on the Newbery Award Committee and regularly reviews and presents on books for youth at international, national, state, and local conferences. Confratuteis a summer institute on enrichment-based differentiated teaching held at the University of Connecticut, Storrs campus. It’s amazing to see her in action. She’s not a big person, but she has a big voice, and I watched her hand-sell about four hundred books to a crowd of teachers and random passers by in the two hours I was hanging around the bookstore–including at least 200 of mine.

The topic of our discussion was “Weaving the Fabric of Artifacts in the Context of Nonfiction,” which basically meant we could talk about anything having to do with history. We talked fashion, toilets, bugs, disease, poison, you name it.I had so much fun. I could have talked with Susannah and these teachers another two hours. Here’s the gang.This was the end of a very long, busy day for all of them, and it was 9:30 pm when we wrapped up. I couldn’t believe how many teachers stuck it out, and with such enthusiasm!Teachers, if you have never been to this event, mark your calendars for next year. It’s truly awesome.

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