Featured Author Marissa Moss Gets Powtoon’ed by MCPS Fourth Graders

Recently, featured author Marissa Moss (author of “Amelia’s Middle School Graduation Yearbook”) chatted via Skype with a group of 15 fourth graders from Lucy V. Barnsley Elementary School in Montgomery County, Md.

“The students were extremely excited to be selected by their teachers to Skype with Marissa Moss,” said Cara Schoem, the Library Media Specialist at Lucy V. Barnsley Elementary School. “They loved that an author was answering their questions. Marissa told us that she once won a year’s worth of free ice cream cones from winning a drawing contest – I wish she could have seen the students’ expressions. Their eyes were huge from the thought of a year’s worth of free ice cream.”

After the talk, two of the students, Shoshana Ritter and Hannah Ott, gave up recess for several days and instead took to technology to create a Powtoon* overview of what they learned during the conversation.

“Marissa was extremely encouraging to the students, telling them to keep drawing and encouraging them to follow their dreams,” Schoem added.

Marissa Moss has written more than 50 children’s books, from picture books to middle-grade and young adult novels. Best known for the Amelia’s Notebook series, her books are popular with teachers and children alike. “Barbed Wire Baseball,” her latest picture book won the California Book Award Gold medal. Marissa studied art at San Jose State but fought too much with her art teachers (she was very opinionated – she wanted to do my kind of art; they wanted her to do theirs). She waited tables while sending out stories, waiting for some editor to fall in love with her work. There was no fall-back plan, no alternative career. She says she still would be waiting tables if she weren’t lucky enough to have gotten that first book. And after that, the second one, and then the third and the fourth and the fifth…

* What is Powtoon? According to its website, Powtoon is a “minimalist, user friendly and intuitive presentation software that allows someone with no technical or design skills to create engaging professional ‘look and feel’ animated presentations.”