Nick Bruel Author Visit

Today, we were visited by the author Nick Bruel, who is the author of the Bad Kitty series. He presented his new book Bad Kitty: Puppies Big Day, which came out today, January 6th, 2014. Mr. Bruel discussed where he gets his ideas for his books. To our surprise, he starts all of his books by simply coming up with a title! Who knew! Then he explained how he with the title Bad Kitty, before creating the story of Bad Kitty. After he came up with multiple events in the stories, he put them in order alphabetically, and the Bad Kitty books were born. As an aspiring author, I loved learning how he started his books.

For a majority of the assembly, Mr. Bruel worked with all of the students to come up with a story called Mad Horse. He went through an exercise with the students where he asked them many questions in a rapid fire way, and called on students to answer. He took whatever was said to him and incorporated it into the story. Here is what the students came up with...

Mad Horse

Mad Horse lived on a farm, but he did not like the other animals because they are mean to him. He got very mad when they were mean to him. He was running away from the farm to the city.  The city was five hundred million miles away. He decided to get on a plane, but he didn't have any money. So then, he jumped on a train to go to the city. He was not supposed to be on the train, so he was kicked off. He needed a miracle. Santa arrived because one of his reindeer had fallen off and he needed Mad Horse to help him. Santa sprinkled pixie dust on Mad Horse. They went to the city together. When he saw his cousin, he was happy and they talked and talked and talked.

He finished by telling students what the secret to writing a story is.

"This is the secret to writing stories. Always ask yourself questions."

I was very impressed by the presentation and so happy that I took my class to go see him. I would encourage all teachers to try to get an author to visit. This was our second author visit this year! I hope that this visit will encourage my students to be patient writers.