D.W. (Kim Brown) Visits Elementary
by Samantha Beutler
March 18, 2010
On Thursday, March 18, Kim Brown visited Northeast Elementary students in grades K-6. Kim is the sister to the popular author, Marc Brown, who has written and illustrated well over 100 children's books. Marc Brown is best known for his "Arthur" stories, which he started writing and illustrating over 30 years ago. Twelve years ago, this popular children's book series was transformed into the PBS Kids television program "Arthur".
Kim answered questions about Marc Brown and his Arthur books, telling us that he bases his characters on people he knows from real life. Kim is the inspiration for the "assertive" character, D.W. Marc began his author career by writing and illustrating "Arthur's Nose" for his son, Tolan, who wanted a bedtime story about a weird animal. Every Arthur book except his first one has a game within it: children are challenged to find the names of Marc's children, Tolan, Tucker, and Eliza.
Kim showed students a slide show using pictures from her and Marc's childhood, and then followed up with a reading of "D.W., the Picky Eater". She showed rough drafts of the book as Marc wrote and illustrated it, and explained that it takes 30 drafts for Marc to get a book written, illustrated, and published the way he likes. His studio is an old barn on his property that has been remodeled, and sometimes he illustrates books for his wife, Laurie Kransy Brown.
With the help of Kim and a step-by-step illustration from Marc, everyone learned how to draw an Arthur's head. She ended the presentation by stamping a D.W. print and Marc Brown autograph on students' illustrations or personal Arthur books, which had teachers excited as well.
Marc has sold over 65 millions books! Now when he writes a new book, 100,000 copies are printed for the first edition before new editions are printed (and sometimes a book can be reprinted 10 or 15 times)! His favorite Halloween pastime was to dress up as Arthur and give out Arthur books on Halloween. However, this tradition was well-known in the Massachusetts area, and entire classrooms of students would show up on his doorstep on Halloween. The last time he did this was several years ago and we gave away 1,000 books before he ran out!
While Marc Brown calls Martha's Vineyard his home, our guest presenter, Kim, lives in Litchfield, Nebraska and did our school's visit on a much-discounted rate as a helping hand to school libraries in Nebraska. Although she travels nationally to do author presentations about her brother, she was off to Fremont after our visit and will be doing presentations in Columbus this weekend.
Thanks to Kim Brown for bringing an author and illustrator's perspective to our school!
