Gina Damico Stops at PFTSTA on her Slapdash Book Tour

Having two author visits in a two week period may put me over the edge. However, I have no control over an author's travel schedule, and I don't want to say no to a great opportunity for my students. On October 1st as Gina Damico was making her way back home to Boston from the Austin Teen Book Festival, she stopped for a visit with the students at PFTSTA. She made a presentation to the 9th graders who were fascinated by the fact that grim reapers were the central characters in her books. The students at PFTSTA usually have very insightful questions for visitors, but in this case they seemed to focus on the minutiae of the book. They asked about how the reapers traveled, did they really kill their subjects (actually no to this), how were the new reapers selected, who were the reapers that weren't following the rules. All of these questions could be answered by reading, Croak, the first book in the trilogy. I was hoping for more why questions or questions about Gina's writing process or how she became a writer. 

Once the talk was over, the students were eager to engage her in one on one conversation while she signed bookmarks for them, hands and even someone's cast. She also gave them magnets picturing the covers of her books. At the end of the day, one of those students ran into the library to check out Gina's book that he knew his friend had just returned. The students were definitely interested in her book, and its appeal crosses over for both boys and girls. 

One of Gina's biggest fans at PFTSTA

Since Monday is the day for our regularly scheduled Bookmarked meeting, I decided to provide lunch to the students and invite Gina to join us. She did along with her sister Lisa who was traveling cross country with her. For lunch we served the quintessential New Orleans poboy along with Louisiana-made Zapp's chips. This was a rare treat for Bookmarked who possibly enjoyed the lunch as much as visiting with the author. 

Posing with the author once lunch was done

Thanks Gina for taking time out of your travels to stop and visit with us. We hope that you enjoyed us as much as we enjoyed having you. Read about Gina's travels here on her blog. You can find more pictures of the day on the library website here. You can find a book trailer for each of Gina's books on the library website here (scroll half way down the page to find them).