What happens when we visit your school?

We love being able to connect with educators and classrooms around the world. In addition to presentations we do in person in Southern California, we offer virtual Author/Illustrator visits via Skype so we can "visit" with classrooms regardless of distance.

Having an author or illustrator connect with your students can help motivate them to read, write, and share their own ideas and creativity through their work.

We are happy to customize our visit to align it with your current curriculum's needs. Just let us know what percent of our visit you want dedicated to the subjects below:

  • Storytelling
    • Building worlds and creating a setting that is consistent and engaging.
    • Building characters, internal and external conflict, and crafting characters the reader wants to know.
    • Plot, hero's journey, set up and pay off.
  • Writing and Self Publishing
    • Conducting research.
    • Discipline and dedication.
    • Content editing and taking criticism.
    • Proof-reading and editing.
    • Formatting and self publishing.
    • The journey of an entrepreneur.
  • Illustration
    • Designing characters and drawing from real animals.
    • Studying real life environments.
    • Layered  drawing - roughs, pencils, inks, colors, shading and highlights.
    • Fostering a creative mindset, dealing with self-judgement, accepting critiques and valuing effort and progress.
    • Art demonstrations and directed drawing sessions available.
  • Topics from our book
    • Deforestation and how even kids can help.
    • Refugees and helping new kids feel welcome.
    • Animals and plants from the story and facts about them.
    • Social-Emotional topics from the story like respect, empathy, compassion and mindfulness.
    • Reading comprehension and creative activities available. 
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What's included?

Local School Visits:  we offer one hour customized sessions with a little extra time at the end allocated for Q&A and book signings. We also offer an opportunity to earn funds for your school through pre-orders of our book (please see School Visits Fees and Fundraising page for more).

However, if you are looking to book multiple sessions for different grades or schools, please contact us via email at [email protected] to discuss other options and rates.

Classroom/Non-Local School Virtual Visits: we offer a 30 minute FREE  Skype session that is customizable based on what you want to cover. We do our best to leave a few minutes for Q&A sessions and are happy to do longer sessions for a small fee.  The most successful sessions are those with a longer Q&A where the students are prepared to engage with details from the story, so we recommend students have read, or listened to, the story in advanced.

Please feel free to email us at [email protected] to discuss more details and customize your Skype Classroom visit.

Reading Comprehension Crossword Puzzle for The Blue Amber of Sumatra

preparing for a school visit

Here are some tips to help make our visit the most successful for you and your students:

  1. As mentioned above, we recommend that you read our book a few weeks in advance as a class to familiarize yourself with our story, characters and message.
  2. Watch our book trailer and other videos on our YouTube channel.
  3. Ask your library to order books (within budget) for your school so students can check out copies. Please see below to find out where your librarian can purchase our book at a discount rate. We will donate a signed copy of our book for any local visits.
  4. Send out Pre-Order book forms with students 3-4 weeks in advance for book signing (if you plan for us to sell our book and include a signing at the visit). 
  5. Brainstorm with your students to come up with questions they want to ask about our book, writing, illustration, publishing, etc., after reading our book.
  6. Complete our Reading Comprehension puzzle and Character Profile Sheets in class.

 

where can school libraries purchase our book?

We offer our book at a discount price to school libraries through the following websites:

Our book is also available on:

Free educational resources below!

Visit cost and fundraising

Not sure if your school can afford a visit? Click here to see our fee structure, working with us to give back to your school, and tips on how to raise funds to make the most of your author-visit dollars!

Benefits of an author visit

Click here to read more about how having an author/illustrator visit your school benefits your students.

Get to know our team

As a multicultural team based in Southern California, we appreciate the vast diversity of our coastal state, and we bring that respect of diversity into everything we do. With both passion and compassion, we work hard to bring the world to kids in our stories and talks so they can understand how vast and complex it is without feeling small or unimportant.

Our visits are generally done by our Author/Illustrator John Lee and our Creative director/Content Editor, Shearin Lee. To have both authors attend, please email us for availability and pricing effects.

Blanca carranza

Blanca book headshot

Founder & Best-selling Co-Author

John Lee

John Lee Headshot close

Best-selling Co-Author & Illustrator

Shearin Lee

Shearin Headshot 3

Creative Director & Content Editor