There’s no better way to celebrate Digital Learning Day than Skype-ing with a favorite author!!! Our class was over-the-moon excited to “meet” author and illustrator Lizi Boyd (and her dog Ollie). “Words…you have to hear them,” began Ms. Boyd as she shared a glimpse into her journey as a writer. From explaining what an “agent” is to sharing that she “likes making presents,” we learned quite a bit in our 30 minutes of shared time with this vivacious lady!

Check out the 44 inquisitive faces peering at the screen during our session!

In preparation for this event, we had brainstormed questions, then rated them to find our top 6. Student interviewers were selected to ask Ms. Boyd questions on camera (and in the end, we did have time for lots of extra questions and answers). We learned a bit about her hobbies, her inspirations as a writer, her love of Paris, SF and soup, and other books she’s written. She gave us a little tour of her lovely studio and we recognized several things from The Crooked Cottage blog post about her.

Another exciting aspect of our time with Ms. Boyd was finding out that her wonderful, wordless books, Inside Outside and Flashlight, have been published in numerous other language, including French, Chinese and Korean. Congratulations, Ms. Boyd!

One of our collective, “burning” questions was about her upcoming book, and we were THRILLED when she told us about the book and even gave us a sneak-peek of some of the artwork! What an honor! Though we’re not going to steal her thunder by sharing the title of her new book, we’ll certainly share it out as soon as it’s published!

It was fun that Ms. Boyd suggested a new art project to the class: shadow puppets! She showed us several of her puppets and we’d love to experiment with this concept.

Skype-ing with “our” Lizi Boyd was such an amazing experience that it’s hard not to start thinking about when the next time might be… We feel so fortunate to have the internet to be able to connect with an author in this way and we would encourage other classrooms to do the same!