MAKING WRITING EXCITING

By SEAN BARRON

news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Eight -year-old Jacob McCaman

liked the dog pictures, and the activities weren’t bad either.

“She’s real nice, a famous author, and I like her books’ colors and pictures. She was really funny,” said Jacob, giving his assessment of children’s author/illustrator Dar Hosta.

The collage artist and award-winning author of five children’s books of Flemington, N.J., gave a series of reading and writing sessions Friday to students in kindergarten through grade six at Paul C. Bunn Elementary School, 1825 Sequoya Drive.

Hosta also spoke to and showed slides to the more than 300 youngsters about how she came up with the ideas for her books.

Much laughter filled the cafetorium as an animated Hosta discussed her book “Doggie Do!” by sharing with her young audience some of her Labrador retriever’s exploits. After talking about how such dogs have a knack for going after sticks and tennis balls, for example, she showed a video of the animal in her backyard circling after its tail.

During that session, Hosta explained the connections and transfer of ideas from one of her books to another. She also stressed that editing and revision are integral parts of the writing process.

“My inspirations come out of life and things I’m interested in,” such as nature and animals, she added.

Hosta shared some of those inspirations at a writing workshop she had for the second- and third-graders in the crowd, who put together a poem about trees. Their first step was to come up with adjectives regarding how a tree sounds, feels and smells.

“Fresh!” one student shouted when the youngsters were asked to describe a tree’s scent after a summer rain.

Main goals of the session were to enhance the students’ vocabulary and expose them to some of the mechanics of writing.

Hosta shared, for example, how many of her books are filled with alliteration and onomatopoeia, the formation of a word by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent, such as cuckoo.

Also during her visit, Hosta read her book “I Love the Alphabet” to students in kindergarten and first grade; beforehand, she had lunch with selected fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders.

Numerous collages the students made based on themes from Hosta’s books were posted throughout the school in advance of her appearance.

In the cafetorium was one displaying and describing habitats, insects and animals that teacher Prudy Platt’s second-graders did based on Hosta’s book “I Love the Night.” Next to it was a tree collage by fifth-graders from her book “If I Were a Tree.”

Hosta’s visit came about when she met Samie Winick, a special-education consultant and teacher at Bunn, said Principal Maria Pappas. The two were at a children’s gardening symposium in Cleveland, and it wasn’t long before the Bunn staff readily agreed to host the author, Pappas recalled.

Hosta’s appearance was paid for with federal Title I stimulus money, which helps to provide education materials and other resources to children in poverty, the principal said.