Hello Families,
We celebrated our Read-a-thon week with many reading related activities.
On Monday, we had D.E.A.R. moments throughout the day. The Kindergartners rang the gong at different times during the day, and everyone K-8 pulled out the book they had with them and plopped down and read for a bit. It was a joy to see everyone digging into their books.

On Tuesday, we had “Transformation Tuesday” where we dressed up as favorite book characters! There was quite a variety of characters that showed up in Temescal Creek that day!

We had Buddies and got to share the notes we had taken about the local animals for our research writing. It was very helpful to have 7th graders joining us and asking Temescalians questions to dig deeper and share more information about the animal they picked to study.

We had author visits from our own Temescalian who shared about a book that she has published on Kindle. (Her pen name is AW Thorn). We also heard from local writer Shanthi Sekaran who has written for everything from the New York Times to the NBC drama New Amsterdam.  She shared The Samosa Rebellion, and talked about her upcoming Boomi’s Boombox.
Shanthi Sekaran shared that she started by writing poetry and didn’t seriously start writing until she was 22 years old. Her first published book was Lucky Boy. It took 2-2.5 years to draft Lucky Boy and 3 years to edit it as the was juggling a job and family life.
Her advice to any writers in the audience was, “You don’t have to be perfect. Just be yourself. There is only one of you. Your responsibility is to just make it and give it to the world.” Also, “If you find it interesting someone else may find it interesting too.”

We also heard from Katryn Bury. Hailing from Oakland, Katryn Bury is a local librarian, author, and “a lifelong true crime nerd.” She shared Drew Leclair Gets a Clue and the forthcoming sequel, Drew Leclair Crushes the Case. She wanted to write mysteries but they were always “too serious” until one day, she was inspired by reading Bunnicula and found that mysteries could be funny too.
When asked who she goes to for feedback, she shared that having a critique partner, who shared a literary agent, was helpful because they were also writing and going through the same process.

Thank you for donating gently used books! Our Book Swap was a success and each TBS kid brought many new-to-them books home!

Our culminating event was the Read-a-thon itself! Temescalians brought in stuffies, pillows, blankets, and got cozy as we read and were read to throughout the day! We had guest readers like Molly, who shared Snow & Rose by Emily Winfield Martin. We were enthralled by the story! Lamar shared one of his favorites, The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare. Finally, a parent from Blackberry shared a favorite of hers. We loved hearing from our guest readers, and the Temescalians enjoyed the day of reading!

As a reminder, books borrowed from the Berkeley Library are due on 5/11. We have already sent home the books that were at school so please remember to either return or renew them. Here is a gallery of the books that the Temescalians checked out.