I frequently speak at confrences for teachers and librarians, but there's nothing quite like going to schools and getting to meet my actual readers. If you are interested in having me visit your school, perhaps the following information will be useful.

I give three slide (PowerPoint) presentations per day. Kindergarten or K-1 presentations last half an hour. Second grade and up last about 45 minutes. I do not speak to pre-school children, who are really too young for my books.

It doesn't matter how many children are in the room, so long as they can see the screen and hear what I have to say. I bring my own laptop and a wireless presenter for changing the slides. If the school doesn't own a data projector, please let me know and I can bring my own. The only other things you need to provide are a screen, a microphone, and an AV cart. (Please see "Tips for Hosting a Successful Author Visit" below.)

For Kindergarten and first grade, I do a thirty-minute talk that focuses on storytelling, with pictures, of my three fairy-tale retellings, Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter, Goldie and the Three Bears, and The Giant and the Beanstalk. I talk about how I get my ideas and explain that all good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and what happens in each of these sections. I try to keep questions pretty minimal for this age.

Picture of Diane Stanley by Ethan Tsai, Shanghai, China

For older children (third through fifth, middle school or high school), I begin by talking a little about my childhood and how I became an author and illustrator, emphasizing the important role that reading played in my life. I take them through the process of making a book, including the research (for the art as well as the text), writing, editing, making a type dummy, doing the sketches, making a final dummy, and doing the finished paintings. Kids seem particularly fascinated by the process I have recently devised of doing my sketches and dummy on the computer using a graphics tablet, as well as my latest art technique, egg tempera, in which I make the paint myself mixing egg yolk with powdered colors. I tell them about the trips I take to research the biographies and how I try to use decorative motifs and painting styles in my art to reflect the culture, time and place in which my subject lived. I briefly discuss my novels as well. This presentation takes about forty-five minutes, so you may want to allow an hour if you would like me to take questions afterwards.

For in-between age groups (first and second or second and third) I can do a simplified, shorter version of the older presentation followed by a story, usually The Giant and the Beanstalk or Goldie and the Three Bears.