Author Marissa Moss Leads Workshops for ES Students

On Friday, February 21, author and illustrator Marissa Moss spent the day at YISS with our elementary students. Her morning session taught our 2nd and 3rd grade students about visual storytelling. Students enjoyed choosing a pig and a wizard as their main characters, creating a conflict, and coming up with three different possible endings. As students spoke up to develop the story, Marissa was busy illustrating it. Students chose to end the story with the pig and wizards becoming friends and eating donuts together. A drawing took place at the end of the workshop, with seven of our 2nd and 3rd graders selected to receive a signed illustration of the story.

In the afternoon, Marissa met with the 4th and 5th graders to speak about her experiences writing historical fiction books. She spoke specifically about her books Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero and Barbed Wire Baseball and her sources for these stories. Her workshop was especially interesting to the 4th and 5th graders because they have been studying historical fiction in class. Fifth grader Rena was surprised when Marissa Moss handed her the original manuscript for her book, Amelia’s Notebook, and then had their picture taken together.

The last session was with the Kindergarten and 1st grade students. Marissa read them After-School Monster, a story about a little girl who faced her fear and stood up to the monster that kept growing. As the girl stood up to the monster, it began to shrink because she was taking control of her feelings. Marissa showed the students how to draw several monsters, each expressing different emotions. Another drawing took place with the Kindergarten and 1st grade students, and four students were selected to take home a signed illustration of the monsters drawn by our guest.