Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Library Talk
I was invited to speak at the Airdrie Public Library yesterday, for their Summer Reading program. Airdrie is a small city north of Calgary, and their new library is only a few months old. What a busy, busy place! It was so nice to see a library being so popular (so much for the idea that libraries are being replaced by the internet). Their program theme was "Lost Worlds," and this week was ancient Egypt. The program director asked me to come because I'd posted on my YABS webpage that I'd been inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. She asked me to come talk about Egypt, which I was happy to do, especially since my second, as yet unpublished book, The Amulet of Amon-Ra, is set in ancient Egypt.
There were 3 one hour sessions; the first for 5-8 year olds, the second for 8-12 yos, and the third for 5-8 again. Over 100 kids had signed up for the event today. At each session, I spoke a bit about Egypt, then read from my manuscript (kids are always fascinated to see what a book looks like before it's a book, I've found). (Did some on-the-fly rewriting, too). After that, my 15 yo son, whom I had volunteered to help me, translated the kids' names into hieroglyphs. He was covered in ink by the end of the day, having done about 115 names. Lastly, I showed pictures of my trip to Egypt to the kids on an LCD projector. One of these days, I've got to get ALL the pictures transferred to digital.... they've been very useful so far. They enjoyed those and asked lots of questions.
The library gave me an honorarium, some of which I'm sharing with my son, since he did so much of the work.
All in all, a good day, I think. Certainly a lot of fun.
There were 3 one hour sessions; the first for 5-8 year olds, the second for 8-12 yos, and the third for 5-8 again. Over 100 kids had signed up for the event today. At each session, I spoke a bit about Egypt, then read from my manuscript (kids are always fascinated to see what a book looks like before it's a book, I've found). (Did some on-the-fly rewriting, too). After that, my 15 yo son, whom I had volunteered to help me, translated the kids' names into hieroglyphs. He was covered in ink by the end of the day, having done about 115 names. Lastly, I showed pictures of my trip to Egypt to the kids on an LCD projector. One of these days, I've got to get ALL the pictures transferred to digital.... they've been very useful so far. They enjoyed those and asked lots of questions.
The library gave me an honorarium, some of which I'm sharing with my son, since he did so much of the work.
All in all, a good day, I think. Certainly a lot of fun.
Labels: Egypt, Hieroglyphs, Library
# posted by Leslie Carmichael @ 9:42 AM 
