summer school visit

I usually use the summer to catch up on writing and illustrating as there are no school visits to go to. However, this summer, I invited to return to present to the Rutgers Startalk program. I had presented to this group in 2010 and had such a good time that I was glad to visit again.

this backdrop is actually inspired by The Seven Chinese Sisters which is the book they used last summer. They had invited me to visit last summer too, but I was a little busy.

The Startalk program "cultivates qualified teachers of the Chinese language"with an immersive Chinese  language summer camp for students pre-k through 6th grade. It's a really neat program--by the end of two weeks the kids are speaking better Chinese than me (granted, that isn't too hard but still)!

This year, using The Ugly Vegetables, they created a neighborhood garden mural:

They also had an ugly vegetable farmer's market:

As well as grew the vegetables:

And created a shadow puppet play based on the book:

Isn't that amazing?

With all that, I felt like my visit might be a bit anti climatic:

But the students still seemed to enjoy it and their drawings were so great:

older kids drew dragons!

can you believe these tigers were done by kindergartners?

And I had a great time, again!

Rain Dragon had a good time, too!

Thanks so much, Rutgers!