THE DAY EDDIE MET THE AUTHOR

An author visit becomes an epiphany for at least one third-grader in this purposeful but not heavy-handed episode. Eddie has been looking forward to the impending visit for weeks, because he has a fine question to ask: “How do you write books that have parts meant for me?” But the author—who, Eddie notes, “just looked like a teacher or a mom”—doesn’t call on him during the question-and-answer period after her auditorium presentation. Eddie’s disappointment vanishes, though, when she comes up to him in the hall afterward, and gives him a thoughtful answer to his question. Plainly drawing from personal experience, Borden (Good Luck, Mrs. K!, 1999, etc.) provides gentle, general guidance on how a school should prepare for and conduct an author’s visit, while capturing both the sense of occasion it should entail and one sensitive child’s thoughts and feelings about what he’s read. Gustavson conveys Eddie’s ups and downs in straightforwardly realistic watercolors. For hilarious contrast, pair this heavenly encounter with Author’s Day (1993), Daniel Pinkwater’s school-visit-from-hell account. (Picture book. 6-9)