Crutcher Visit: Planning!

Planning:

• Moore Educational Trust Fund: this local grant allowed this project to happen: plain and simple
  
• Kelly Milner This is the most helpful individual I have ever worked with. Kelly is Chris Crutcher’s assistant and she answered a zillion questions and helped work out the visit including every detail.
  
• This project was a year in the making and believe me, this was not too much time!
  
• The grant allowed me to purchase a classroom set of every book written by Mr. Crutcher.
  
• Arrangements were made for students to purchase books to have autographed at the pizza party. I contacted Lisa Dreyer (lisadreyer@titlepagebookfairs.com) and she mailed us 35 copies of the Crutcher books to sell to the students. We were able to keep a percentage of the book sales as a Book Fair. Cool! http://www.titlepagebookfairs.com/
  
• Newspapers were notified as well as local news and TV stations. We actually had a reporter spend the day with us from the Washington Post! He read about the visit on our web page!
  
• Pre-planning: ALL students were encouraged to read at least one Crutcher book or short story. Students were encouraged to enter the “Lunch with Crutcher” contest on the Crutcher blog.
  
• English classes made posters, researched why his books were controversial, wrote about their opinion with regard to why people wanted to remove some of his books from library books shelves, and created commercial items based on his books.
  
• The football team had their picture taken holding the Crutcher books. This was published on Crutcher’s web page.
  
• A child care class had their picture taken with the books: anything to spread the word! Kelly was great about putting some of our pics on Crutcher’s web page!
  
• Art classes painted ceiling tiles based on his books.
  
• The library web page had a link to the contest blog as well as pictures and information on the upcoming visit.