Children’s Author Talks To Students About WritingTroy Cummings, author of “Can I be your Dog?”, participated Wednesday in a follow-up to March’s Read Across Kosciusko County.
Cummings talked to students and afterward there was a question-and-answer and book signing segment at Sacred Heart Elementary School.
Cummings was also scheduled to visit Harrison and Jefferson elementaries Wednesday, and Syracuse, North Webster and Pierceton elementaries today.
During March, Cummings’ book “Can I be your Dog?” was read by Kosciusko Endowment Youth Services (KEYS), the Kosciusko County Community Foundation’s youth philanthropy program, as part of the Read Across Kosciusko County, which seeks to encourage literacy.
Cummings said him speaking with students will give them an opportunity to speak with an author and see them as a human being.
He said it’s fun to come talk about books and then have students come up with a story with him. He thinks the fun part of writing is coming with ideas and not worrying about spelling and mistakes. Then he gets something out of all the improvising with the students since he never knows what’s going to come and the students come up with ideas he would never think of.
He wants students to go back to their class and come up with ideas with their friends and go back home and draw.
While talking with students at Sacred Heart Catholic School Wednesday morning, he said, when he was a kid, he loved “Where the Wild Things Grow,” which led him to write the books he does.
Some of the guidelines Cummings gave students when writing were to have fun and to ask the question “What if?”
After going through his book “Can I be your Dog?,” Cummings had students answer questions to come up with a story modeled on that book dealing with a pig. He got students to give attributes of pigs, as well as asked where the pig could go to find a home. Students gave answers like the pig could go to a really nice house, a fancy restaurant, junk yard and a farm.
Cummings also said, when writing there has to be problems in the book because that’s what makes the story go. He asked students what could go wrong in the story. Some of the answers given included the pig could eat someone’s dinner and the pig could eat the students’ toys.
Cummings also talked about his “Notebook of Doom” series and the monsters that are illustrated in them. He had students give him ideas of how to draw some funny monsters.
