Sy began a busy December speaking schedule with the enthusiastic students at Thatcher Brook Primary School in Waterbury and Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vt.
Assemblies at both schools featured a Powerpoint show on some of the animals she’s met in her work. The kids correctly identified both the wombat and the tapir in the pictures!
At extended question-and-answer sessions for individual grades in the schools’ libraries, Sy’s books inspired thoughtful queries: How do you decide which animal/book to do next? How did the photographer take the close-ups of the tigers? What do you do if you get sick in the field? A boy always asked “What was the most dangerous animal you studied?” while a girl usually asked, “What was the cutest animal you’ve ever written about?” (The photo above was taken at Crossett Brook Middle School.)
Later on in the month, Sy spoke on her work “Off the Beaten Track” at the Peterborough Rotary’s well-attended luncheon, and Dec. 7, will speak on her first book “Walking with the Great Apes” as part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays program in Montpelier, Vt. Later she’ll be driving down to Boston to WGBH to talk about octopuses.
Sy and Callie Crossley talk octopuses:
And there’s more octopus talk when Sy and Living on Earth visit the New England Aquarium:
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=11-P13-00046&segmentID=6
