Rebecca Stead Comes to Willard!

by guest author Thafir Elzofri, 7th grader

On Wednesday, February 3, 2010, a famous author named Rebecca Stead came to Willard at the Metal Shop Theater from 12:30 to about 1:30. She talked about lots of things about her book and how she came up with one of her two books, When You Reached Me. Her other book is called First Light. She talked about what When You Reach Me was about to be callled and her experience with the story.

One thing she talked about was the title. She said picking the title is the hardest and took about one month. She came up with You Are Here, but sadly she found out that another book was coming that was called You Are Here. It took about 2 weeks to come up with that title then another to come up with When You Reach Me.

Another thing she talked about was the writing process. To explain she used a slideshow showing a picture of lightning which represented a the flash of idea or inspiration. Another thing she showed was a picture of a chair which represented the hard work. She kept doing those steps over and over.

Rebecca said that the book included stuff that happened to her in real life. For example, she said that the "Laughing Man" was what she called a man when she used to go to school and see a man that would always laugh. Also in the book the girl named Miranda loved a book called A Wrinkle in Time, and Rebecca also loved that book. The last thing I can remember she said was her mom was actually on the $20,000 Pyramid.

I'm not the only one who liked the book, so she won a Newbery Award in 2010. In conclusion she was a great speaker as well as a great writer. If I was you, I would read the book. Over all I would like to recommend When You Reach Me to you, SO READ IT!!!!