This year, our library celebrated fifteen years of author visits with our twentieth author. It was a phenomenal day with Gail Jarrow. One that our students, staff, and I won’t soon forget from her fantastically gross images on screen to her deep knowledge of science and history. Couple it with thoughtful questions from the students, and books (free to them through a grant) to have her sign, each student had a personalized experience with her. Plus, it was captured by our dedicated communications staff person who popped up throughout the day to capture it all for which I’m grateful to have the memories that will last afterward but also from better angles and more creative shots with a fancy camera than I could ever get.

It’s been one week and I’m still thinking about it daily. This one but also the ones that came before it.

No one will say author visits are easy. In fact, every year I get frustrated at least once (an understatement) and tell my colleague that I’m never doing it again, but, like childbirth, here we are fifteen years later (though because I had twins, I only did childbirth once so I kind of cheated). Yet, what keeps me doing it year after year is the students. I have received messages years after students have graduated talking about memories of author visits. I look back at the folder of pictures from visits and see the smiling faces. I see the statistics of increased book check out. I hear the teachers talking.

Often the frustration lies with funding, policies, and procedures. Unnecessarily complicated. Not student-centered. Procedures made up by people far removed from the everyday grind of making it happen. But I won’t dwell on the negative. Simply to share that it’s all worth it.