Michelle would love to speak at your public school. Feel free to contact her for availability and fees.

Michelle offers the following programs to public schools:

The Coolest Career Ever! She talks to the k-3 students in a separate convocation than the older children. With the younger kiddos, she talks about becoming a writer in a fun and upbeat way. Then, she allows time for the children to ask questions. And, if it's OK with the teachers and the "powers that be," she chooses 10 to 15 children from the audience to help her act out her picture book, Conversations On the Ark (which is a retelling of Noah's Ark from the animals' point of view). The children always get a kick out of that portion of the program.

Why Wait 'til You're Old to be Published? In this talk, Michelle likes to address intermediate elementary students and older. She briefly talks about some of her neat experiences being a writer (meeting Shaq, interviewing former IU Coach Bob Knight, getting to go to concerts and movies free because she is there to review them, etc.) and then she leads into the meat of the program which is—many magazines and publishers today are looking for kids to write for kids. So, she talks about ways they, as children, can become published authors and earn a little cash right now! Then, she reads a book written by a fifth grade class in Wisconsin that was published through Scholastic and she shows other books written by kids, for kids. She also shows magazines that publish articles by children, and she presents opportunities to write for their local newspaper. (Michelle has a handout to go along with this talk, giving students websites and magazines that want to hear from writers their age.)

The Idea Machine. In this presentation, Michelle discusses how to brainstorm ideas and come up with clever story lines. This talk includes specifics about the writing process. She can be as detailed as teachers would like her to be. (This one usually works best for older students.)


   Michelle does "book give-aways" with each talk when she conducts a "mini quiz" at the end of the talks—that keeps the students listening—because they have to answer the question right in order to get the free books.

   If you'd rather just have one gathering, she can do any of the above presentations and adjust them a bit to fit all ages.

   What she likes to do is send schools a flier that describes each of her books, has a price for each, and then an order form on the back. (She even includes a few lines for the parents to write to whom they'd like her to autograph each book, and she'll do that before she leaves your school on the day of her presentation.) By sending home the order form before she arrives, it wards off some of the confusion the day of. She always feels badly when a little boy or girl comes up to her and says, "I forgot my money today... will you be here tomorrow?" And, of course, she won't be. So, it just seems to work best to plan ahead.

   Her children's books that are already released include: Conversations On the Ark; What Is Christmas?; Memories of the Manger; What Is Easter?; The Sparrow's Easter Song; Little Colt's Palm Sunday; Sister For Sale; Why I Love You, God; Why I Praise You, God; Why I Trust You, God; Why I Thank You, God; No Boys Allowed!; United We Stand: Real Kid Heroes; Ha! Ha! Halloween Poems; My Funny Valentine... Poems; Young Believer Case Files; Tim McGraw—A Blue Banner Biography; Brandi Chastain: No Hands Allowed; Jamie Lynn Spears—A Robbie Readers Biography; Kenny Chesney—A Blue Banner Biography;and The Life and Times of Cleopatra—Biography from Ancient Civilizations Series.

   She also has books for adults that many teachers often enjoy such as: Daily Wisdom for Working Women, Daily Wisdom for Mothers, Secrets of Beauty, Secrets of Happiness , Little Blessings From a Big God, Living the Love Chapter, and Divine Stories of the Yahweh Sisterhood.

Teachers Make Great Authors. Here's another workshop Michelle can offer your school system. She teaches "Writing for Children" at writers' conferences and colleges across the United States, and you know what she often discovers? Teachers are some of the best children's writers around! So, if you'd like, Michelle could teach an after-school workshop for the teachers who are interested in becoming published children's writers. This session incurs an additional fee, but she'd provide them with many handouts and practical information to make their dreams of becoming published come true. (She also has some writing courses that she has taught at past conferences on CD, so she could offer those, too.)