Children's Authors Visit Lower Merion Elementary Schools

LOWER MERION, PA -- Fourth and fifth graders at both Penn Valley and Belmont Hills Elementary Schools had the opportunity to learn about the life of a writer from two well-known children’s authors, Margaret Peterson Haddix and James Riley, when they visited recently, the school district said in a news release on their website.

The visit was a collaborative effort between the schools’ librarians, Ms. Elizabeth Caldwell and Mrs. Cathy Kaufman, and The Children’s Book World in Haverford, the school said.

The authors held the students’ attention while sharing background information and anecdotes about their various books. Haddix is the author of 37 children’s books, including Under Their Skin, In Over Their Heads, Among the Hidden, and The Palace Chronicles. She shared stories from her own life and ways in which she has woven real experiences into her books.

Riley, author of Once Upon the End, Twice Upon a Time, and Half Upon a Time, has also authored the popular children’s book Story Thieves. The school said delighted the audience at both schools with a slide show featuring cats’ reactions to various life experiences and feelings, as he gave background of his own life.

There was time for a Q&A as the students were free to ask questions of both authors, which were responded to candidly and with enthusiasm.

Questions reportedly included: “Who is your favorite author?”, “What made you want to write?”, “If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?”, and “Have you read each other’s books?” Riley said he liked to draw as a child and realized that he also enjoyed writing and telling stories.

Besides writing books, he works as a travel editor for a newspaper and likes journalism. He thinks he would also like to write movies as another way of telling stories. Haddix shared that if she was not an author she would either be a journalist or a teacher – two jobs she found interesting in the past. The authors agreed that writing books is the “best job in the world” and that stories let them lives other than their own.