March - April 2002

SEE THE WORLD: JOIN THE SCBWI!
Guidelines for Author/Illustrator Visits to International Schools
By Carolyn White-Lesieur

Have Author/Illustrator, Will Travel!
If you are an author or illustrator (or both), here's a great way to see the world. The SCBWI Guide to International School Visits (GISV) provides a detailed list of which schools are looking for what/whom and how to contact the schools. In preparation for your trip(s), consider the following tips that might help you plan your "around-the-world" trip.

Setting A Date
The schools in the GISV are eager to hear from you. Most are flexible about the timing of visits, but October and/or February/March are generally the best times for visits, allowing time to prepare the kids for your visit. The enthusiasm generated from your visit endures all year long, and this ripple effect gets cut short when a visit occurs too near to the end of the school year (and due to the great turnover of children in international schools).

Most schools would like to hear from you six-to-nine months in advance. Since the librarian needs to get the principal's agreement, send a PR brochure with newspaper articles or comments about any previous school visits. This always makes a good impression. In addition, if books are to be sold, they must be ordered and shipped overseas (which often takes two months due to clearing customs). Most important, there needs to be ample time for the kids to read your books.

Let the librarian know well in advance if you will need any props--not all international schools have slide projectors, screens, and overhead projectors on site. Arrive at the school early (this allows time for getting lost in unknown cities), so that you and the librarian have time to test the equipment and you can say, "Hello," to the administrator, and get a feel for the school.

Guidelines For Fees
Not all schools have an author/illustrator visit built into their budgets, so the librarian may need to scrounge around for the funds from the Parents' Association. When a budget has been allocated, there are great differences in what the schools can offer. Four sessions per day seems to be the norm (a minimum daily fee for four sessions at $500 US/day--or $125 US/session). In addition to the daily fee, most schools offer hotel or host-family accommodations. Lunch is usually pro-vided in the school's canteen. Dinner is usually with the librarian (and possibly others) to keep you good company, and is often covered by the school. Round-trip airfare is sometimes paid and sometimes not… Some schools offer local transportation costs and site-seeing tours in addition to, or in lieu of air-fare. A best-case scenario is when area schools share the costs.

Book Sales
Whatever help you can give the librarian with book sales will be appreciated. As you know, the children will be excited to purchase the books and an author/illustrator visit always stimulates reading. Give the librarian the contact details at your publisher's and tell her how many books to order. (She may have a local bookseller from whom she can order the books, but this is often quite expensive.) Not all librarians are willing to handle the book sales, so the easier you can make it, the better!

Guidelines For Your "Talk" In An "Overseas" School
Many overseas schools are composed of children from a variety of countries. Get details on the nationalities at the school you will be visiting and on how many children speak your language fluently and how many do not. If you are an English-language writer/speaker, find out if the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) children and the ESL teacher will be participating. It's helpful if these children sit up front and that they may leave with their ESL teacher, if it gets too long for them. Sitting for one hour when one understands nothing can be tough.

Speak slowly if you have non-native speakers in the audience.

Take a good hard look at your books and the assumptions that are made about the reader's prior knowledge. Have you assumed everyone knows what a yearbook is or a prom or Halloween? Are references made to holidays with which the children are not familiar? Comb through your talk and be ready to explain things that are possibly strictly based in your culture.

Here's an anecdote to ponder: As a librarian, I read stories to the younger children and I must have been consistently choosing stories that had pigs in them. One day, a boy from a Middle Eastern country told me he hated all these books with pigs in them! It never occurred to me that these cute pig stories could be offensive.

We all have blind spots regarding other cultures and customs. Speaking as an American, we need to be more deferential, interested, and respectful of how people from other cultures do things. Yes, children around the world do know a lot about the United States, thanks to television and movies, but it's still a good idea to focus on the universal elements in your books and illustrations.

Extras
If you are willing to critique a few writing samples by students, this is always appreciated by both the students and their teachers. So let the librarian know in advance, and she'll inform the teachers. No one expects you to read 150 stories, but if you will read a limited number of pieces by older students (who are interested in writing), it will be the cherry-on-the-top for them--as you can well imagine.

Conclusion
A librarian wrote, "Authors and illustrators are like movie stars for me." So enjoy your moments of fame and see the world. Librarians will do the best they can to treat you like a star--you deserve it!