One of the things I love most about being a children's book author is doing writers' workshops at local elementary and middle schools. I help the students write a story together either about a dragon who is guarding his/ her cave or about an alien who is standing in front of his/her spaceship. We focus on character point of view and writing using all five senses. Every student participates by adding one or two sentences to the story. No matter how many times I've done this, we've never told the same story twice although for some reason a lot of the characters end up being named Bob. The stories are always super creative and usually ridiculously funny. You can read some of them here.

Workshop details:

• I live in Santa Clara County in Northern California and do workshops throughout the South Bay and up the Peninsula.
• 3rd through 6th grade seem to be the ideal ages for my workshops. I have done modified workshops for 2nd graders.
• I do one classroom at a time so that every child has the opportunity to contribute to the story.
• One hour or a little more than one hour works well. Forty-five minutes is doable but it's almost impossible to give every child an opportunity to participate in that time.
• I'm happy to rotate through as many classrooms as we can fit in a day. I've done as many as 4 sessions in one school day.
• I need a lot of white board space. We usually fill up at least two large white boards.
• I do this for free -- I'm a mom and a school volunteer so I know how tight funding is right now.
• I do provide a sign-up sheet to be sent home for kids who might want to buy my books. Obviously, I don't require that people purchase the books but I get a lot of requests so it's helpful to have a process in place.

NOTE: I also have participated in Discovery Days at various schools where I talk about what it's like to be an author.

E-mail me at author@kristiwrightbooks.com for more information about the workshops.