MY SPECIAL DAY AT THIRD STREET SCHOOL

In this fictionalized, but doubtless reality-based encounter, an author addresses a class of middle-graders, and it’s all that a school visit should be. Before children’s author Amanda Drake arrives, the children have read her books, decorated the school, and with their teacher’s help (“Don’t ask her, / How much money do you make?”), prepared questions to ask. Drake in turn, pink streaks in her flyaway white hair, sweeps in, cutting a larger-than-life figure as she cuddles the class pets, talks enthusiastically about writing—“There’s something that I’d like to share / because it’s truly true. / It doesn’t seem like work / if you are loving what you do”—and leaves the children itching to write stories of their own. Though Bunting amply demonstrates here that writing in verse is not her forte, along with Daniel Pinkwater’s hilariously flip-side Author’s Day (1993), this exuberant alternative to Louise Borden’s low-key The Day Eddie Met The Author (2001) should be required reading in all schools planning author visits. (Picture book. 7-10)