We’re donating our Bash and Lucy books to classrooms, and then visiting the students via Zoom to discuss how we created the books.

If you’re interested in having us donate books and visit, email us at BashAndLucy@gmail.com.

The second graders in the photo above attend Jewett Elementary School in Central Point, Oregon. We’re excited that we’ll be meeting with them–and their teacher, Andrea Christmas–Wednesday via Zoom.

Recently we visited with 1st grade students in New Jersey via Zoom. We have visited this classroom every year for many years!

When we speak to classes, we begin our story with the death of our dear dog, Lucy, 10 years ago. To help overcome our grief, we decided to write a children’s book, Bash and Lucy Fetch Confidence, that stars Lucy as a golden retriever who helps boost the confidence of kids on a soccer team. We then explain that we have since written three additional books and produced three audiobooks. We’re working on our fourth audiobook now.

We ask the students to tell stories about their experiences using writing and art to overcome grief.

Next, we give some writing tips–the importance of conflict in stories, and ask kids to identify the conflict in the book we sent them.

We also talk about the importance of writing with strong verbs, and ask the students for examples.

In addition, we may cover how we create our audiobooks (with voice-overs by kids), the publishing process, how we work with our illustrator and our public relations efforts. We explain how we appeared on the Today Show. And we tell the kids about our fundraising efforts. When we sell our books, we often donate a portion of the sales–most recently, to the Ukrainian Foundation.

At this point the kids have lots of questions. They generally include:
–Michael, what’s it like being an author?
–How do you come up with ideas for your books?
–Can we see your new dog, Hudson?
–How do you two work together as authors?
–How do you make your words and illustrations into a book?
–What book or books is our bookworm, Michael, now reading?
–What are our favorite books?
–How do you decide who to raise funds for?

With some classes we brainstorm ideas for our next books This is really fun; the kids give us lots of great food for thought.

Here’s one of our first brainstorming sessions (Michael is five):

Again, if you’d like us to donate books to your school and visit, email us at BashAndLucy@gmail.com.