Lesa Cline-Ransome Comes To Visit!

 Today, Tuesday, September 9th, 2014, Lesa Cline-Ransome came to visit our graduate class at Mount Saint Mary College and it was an honor having her!  Lesa shared her great children's books, inspirations, family life, and more!  She started with telling us about her family, which I thought was a great way to get the audience involved and listening to her great presentation.  She went on to tell us about the process and how long it takes to bring a bunch of ideas together to make a book, edit, revise, send it to editors to get it approved, get it accepted, and then send it to be illustrated (which was most of the time, by her husband).  Before her speech, I did not know how much time it took to get a book published and the overall time and effort put into it (years!).  I was amazed at her dedication to writing children's literature and how enthusiastic she is about her writing.  Not only is she a great writer, but a wonderful public speaker.  Lesa held my attention easily the whole time through her enthusiasm, reading aloud some of her writing pieces, and constantly engaging in conversation with the audience. 

                                          

After one of her read alouds, I found myself very interested in her book, Words Set Me Free because of the wonderful historic knowledge in it and illustrations.  I enjoy her type of writing and the research and interest that she puts into writing biographies.  Words Set Me Free particularly caught my attention because it would be a great book to use in a classroom library or read aloud to my students during a Social Studies unit.  This picture book biography chronicles the youth of Frederick Douglass, one of the most prominent African American figures in American history.  Our class had the great opportunity to have the author herself, Lesa Cline-Ransome read it to us and tell us what inspired her to write this book.  We were lucky enough to hear the great process of what goes into the writing, editing, and publishing process.  I became very engaged in learning about biography books and memoirs.  It was an honor to have Lesa Cline-Ransome come visit our class today and I look forward to having more authors come in to share with us.