Welcome to the Authors Who Skype with Classes & Book Clubs List!  I’m Kate Messner, the children’s author and educator who maintains this site.  I started it because I’ve found that virtual author visits are a great way to connect authors and readers, and I realize that many schools facing budget troubles don’t have the option of paid author visits. With that in mind, this is a list of authors who offer free 20-minute Q and A sessions with classes and book clubs that have finished reading one of their books. As an author, I offer free Skype chats for the following titles:

This collaborative effort between the language arts instructor and teacher-librarian (TL) transforms a traditional essay assignment into a creative, technologically rich activity. The project, in which students write stories about their “personal heroes” in a graphic-novel format, should take three to five class periods to complete.

IF you’d wanted to know which way the world was headed in the mid-20th century, you wouldn’t have found much indication in any of the day’s literary prizewinners. You’d have been better advised to consult a book from a marginal genre with a cover illustration of a stricken figure made of newsprint catching fire.

Called 60 Second Book Hooks, we've asked our students to generate short, persuasive metaphorical reviews of the books that they are reading.

In this 60 Second Book Hook, sixth grade teacher Bill Ferriter reviews The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Category: Education Tags: gnomes 60secbookhook License: Standard YouTube License

The convergence of vintage design and propaganda is a thing of beauty and power, be it in science or in politics. Ben Perry’s massive collection of 20th-century Soviet and Russian propaganda, advertising, and art posters, created between 1917 and 1991, offers a beautiful perspective on mid-century design and the modernist aesthetic from the other side of the Iron Curtain.