Author Visits Reed Intermediate School

By Eliza Hallabeck

Author Shelley Pearsall was at Reed Intermediate School Thursday, May 7, to speak with students who read at least eight of the books on the Nutmeg Book Award list for year, to share her experience as an author.

Each year, according to library/media specialist Virginia Snowden, Reed students who read at least eight of the ten books on the Nutmeg Children’s Book Award list are treated to an author presentation and luncheon.

“This year we are very fortunate to have Shelley Pearsall, who wrote Trouble Don’t Last,” said Ms Snowden.

The sixth grade students were treated to Ms Pearsall’s presentation first, but the fifth grade readers also had their chance to listen and speak to the author later.

Most of the sixth graders held a copy of Trouble Don’t Last during Ms Pearsall’s presentation.

“First of all, we are celebrating the wonderful job you did with reading your Nutmegs,” Ms Snowden told the students.

Students who read at least ten books this year and ten books last year were recognized before Ms Pearsall spoke to the students. Those students were Brandon O’Sullivan, Miranda Wakeman, Rebecca Frank, Zachary Weiland, and Sean MacMullan.

“You can see,” said Ms Pearsall, “that I write about really different topics.” She shared a book, a 40-page story, that she attempted to submit for publication while in fifth grade with the students.

Ms Pearsall started her presentation by describing her different books to the students. Her first novel, Trouble Don’t Last, is the story of an 11-year-old boy born into the life of slavery who runs away with another slave for freedom one night in 1859. In 2003 Trouble Don’t Last won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Her next book, Crooked River, was about a murder trial where a Chippewa Indian stood accused.

Ms Pearsall said she wrote Crooked River to give the man accused of murder a voice.

From writing about history, she next wrote a contemporary young adult novel, All of the Above, about a school that attempted to build the world’s largest tetrahedron, a triangular geometric object with flat surfaces.

“After math I went to Elvis,” said Ms Pearsall. All Shook Up follows the life of a boy whose father decides to start dressing as an Elvis impersonator. “This book was really fun to write,” said Ms Pearsall, because she had the chance to meet a number of different Elvis impersonators as research for the book.

In response to a question from a student, Ms Pearsall said she does not like choosing a favorite from the books she has written, but Trouble Don’t Last would be the one. The book was published about 20 years after she first tried to be published in the fifth grade, she said.

“I traveled the whole distance that they would have traveled,” Ms Pearsall said when describing her research for Trouble Don’t Last.

One day she pulled to the side of the road, she said, to sit in a cornfield to understand what it would be like in a cornfield. She said growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, she had never had the chance to sit in a cornfield before.

“That’s what I love about writing,” she told the students. “Every book is a little different. Sometimes I get to sit in a cornfield, and sometimes I get to build tetrahedrons.”

After Ms Pearsall’s presentation, she signed books for students, and they were treated to pizza and cake. She also visited Middle Gate Elementary School for a presentation after her visit to Reed.