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JJ Brothers champion reading and writing at Lloyd
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .The JJ Brothers duo taught the students about sentence structure, pointing out how each sentence includes a verb and a noun. Host Jim Hixon (right) enjoyed all of his brother's sentences until the last, which reads, "Jim plays with Barbie dolls."
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .The JJ Brothers said that they wrote much of the dialogue of their three books by pretending to be their characters and imagining what they would say in certain situations. Jim Hixon (standing) asked a group of Lloyd teachers and students to imagine what the characters in their book "The Adventures of Nut E. Squirrel" would say, and gave Kristin Bair (left), Kerry Blakeman, Madeline Tonus, Connor Gilligan, and Colin Carver a character to bring to life.
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .During the JJ Brother's visit to Lloyd Elementary on Nov. 30, the duo championed the power of imagination. As Jim Hixson (left) read a passage from the book "A Christmas Story," his brother Jon showed up in a ghost costume with chains, definitely making the tale come alive for Lloyd students.
By SARAH FOOR
“How many Falcons out there like to read and write?” Lloyd principal Tom Lenton asked his students on Nov. 30.
The answer was an enthusiastic cheer and many raised hands.
Meeting kids who love to read and write is a particular passion of Akron-area literacy duo JJ Brothers. Jon and Jim Hixson shared their love of reading and writing along with a healthy dose of wacky humor when they visited Lloyd on Nov. 30.
The brothers told the students that imagination is a powerful tool as they continue to grow and read more advanced books.
“As you get older, you’ll find that there will be less and less pictures in your books. You’ll have to make your own pictures in your imagination, which will help bring the book you’re reading to life,” explained host Jim Hixson.
To prove the point in a silly way, Jim read excerpts from the JJ Brother’s book “The Adventures of Nut E. Squirrel” as well as passages from “A Christmas Carol” and “Little Women.” As Jim Hixson read, his brother Jon definitely made the stories come alive by showing up dressed as a giant squirrel, a ghost and then a woman, which earned a big laugh from the Lloyd students.
Along with reading, Jim Hixson told the students to start writing some of their own stories.
“I started writing at your age, in third and fourth grade. I started small, starting with poems, going to short stories and then to chapter books. It seems really hard to write something, but it all starts with that first sentence,” Hixson said during the presentation.