I had a great day with the all the students at Bowdoin Central School talking about my writing process and the sea creatures I’ve encountered. After a schoolwide assembly in the gym, I visited with the students in second through fifth grades and shared lunch with 20 kindergarteners and first graders. Favorite parts of the day: hearing students’ ideas for great opening lines for their own books, seeing how well prepared they were through their questions and observations, and turning second-grade teacher Ms. Rice into a dolphin trainer. One student’s mother said her daughter now wants to be a marine biologist! (And a writer, I hope!)

Second grader Iris proved my point that books need writers and artists!