I am not familiar with these authors as presenters, but we had Eric Berlin, the author of “The Potato Chip Puzzles” visit our school last year. He was fabulous. David, I know “The Potato Chip Puzzles” is not a challenging book for 7^th and 8^th grade, but the puzzle presentations by Berlin are very much on target for that age group. His presentation is interactive and the visit ended with a puzzle contest that involved about 70 of our students for roughly 1.5 hours! (He can do larger groups, too.) You can check out the puzzles on his web page – they definitely involve higher order thinking.

Here is the link:

From: casl-l-bounces@mylist.net [mailto:casl-l-bounces@mylist.net] On Behalf Of David Bilmes
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:14 AM
To: CASL-L@mylist.net
Subject: [CASL-L] Author visit feedback

Since we seem to have an author visit theme going on the CASL listserv today, I thought I'd add to it. I'm considering bringing either Jake Halpern (Dormia) or Nora Raleigh Baskin (Anything But Typical) to my school later this year. If you've had either one of these authors come to your school, I'd love some feedback. I want to make sure whichever one we bring in can do a good job of engaging a large-group presentation (approximately 250 kids) of 7th and 8th graders.

David Bilmes
Library Media Specialist
Schaghticoke Middle School
23 Hipp Road
New Milford, CT 06776
(860) 354-2204, ext. 113 or 115
bilmesd@newmilfordps.org

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