Visiting Authors: Community Opportunities

Visiting Authors Book Sale and Signing

The Elementary Library will have a limited selection of books by our visiting authors available for sale from March 4-8. We have several titles available by both Laura Vaccaro Seeger and William Kamkwamba, some hardback and some paperback, ranging in price from AED 30 to AED 70. Students and parents are welcome to visit throughout the school day to purchase books.

Would you like to have your books signed by our visiting authors? When you purchase a book, we will label it with the name that you would like to include in the dedication. The books will then be delivered to your child's classroom before March 28. If you have books at home or would like to purchase them elsewhere, you may also bring these books into the ES Library to be signed.

Film Screening of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

We are thrilled to offer a screening of the newly released film adaptation of William Kamkwamba's The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Join us on Tuesday, March 19 at 6pm in the ASD Theater. A Question and Answer session will follow with William Kamkwamba himself. Families of students Grade 4 and up are encouraged to attend. Please note that the film has a US rating of PG11. Watch the official film trailer here.

Family Book Making Workshop with Laura Seeger

Join us on Tuesday, March 26 in the ES Library from 3:30pm - 4:30pm for a Family Book Making Workshop with Laura Seeger. Children will have the opportunity to create and cut-out or flap book in the style of Laura's work. It will be a fun, hands-on opportunity for families to be book makers together.

Breakout Edu: Unlocking Learning as a Team

This week, Grade 4 students have been engrossed in problem solving using Breakout Edu. Students worked in groups to solve a series of puzzles based around our visiting author Laura Vaccaro Seeger's books. The puzzles revealed the codes needed to unlock a series of padlocks and open the breakout box. A fun surprise of origami materials was hidden inside each box.

Breakout Edu kits aim to help design learning experiences that "bring the 4 Cs alive: critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication." The student groups that were the most successful with the Breakout challenge worked together as a team, carefully read the clues, checked for understanding with their teammates and recorded their thinking as they worked through the puzzles.

Teams were jumping and cheering with joy as they solved each lock code. The excitement was tangible in the room. Many students asked, "When can we do this again?!" Some students also wanted to know how to set the locks and wondered if they could try designing their own challenges.

This is just the beginning of the powerful learning that we can experience with Breakout Edu. We can't wait to do more!

Visiting Authors Coming Soon

We will soon welcome our Visiting Authors, William Kamkwamba and Laura Vaccarro Seeger. From March 17 - 28, William and Laura will engage our learning community with workshops and presentations.

William Kamkwamba's memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a New York Times Bestseller and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, is uniquely available in three formats - a picture book, middle grade novel and adult novel. William's story has inspired many as it shows how even in the face of hardship a child's idea can change the world. We invite our ASD community to participate in a One School, One Book celebration - a shared reading experience - with The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

When fourteen-year-old William’s Malawi village was hit by a drought, food and money were scarce. Unable to attend school, William spent days in the library, researching and dreaming of bringing electricity to his village. William built a functioning windmill out of junkyard scraps and became a hero who harnessed the wind.

After an invitation to join TEDGlobal as a fellow, William graduated from Dartmouth College in 2014 and began work at Ideo.org. William's time at Ideo focused on Human Centered Design and sent him around the world working on projects ranging from sanitation in India to gender-based violence prevention in Kenya. He is now working with WiderNet to develop appropriate technology curriculum that will allow people to bridge the gap between "knowing" and "doing". WiderNet will distribute the content through eGranaries around Malawi and across Africa. His Moving Windmills Project uses donations to support community initiatives in Malawi.

Laura Vaccaro Seeger is a best-selling and award-winning creator of 19 children's books. Her books such as Green, First the Egg, What If? and Lemons Are Not Red are full of surprises that delight her readers. With features including flaps, cut-outs, and hidden pictures, each book is unique and interactive. 

Laura is a two-time winner of the Caldecott Honor Award, winner of the New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Best Picture Book, and a 2-time winner of the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award. She is also the recipient of both the Massachusetts Reading Association and the New York Empire State awards for “Body of Work and Contribution to Children’s Literature”.

Laura’s paintings have been exhibited at many museums and galleries including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, the Mazza Museum of Picture Book Art, the New York Public Library, and the New York Nassau County Museum of Art. Laura earned her BFA degree at the School of Fine Art and Design at the State University of New York. She began her career as an animator, artist, designer, and editor NBC and ABC and won an Emmy Award for an opening animation for an NBC Special.

Look out for more information about our Visiting Authors celebrations in the coming weeks.