 Good morning everyone and welcome to Kid Quake. My name is Becca Puttington and I'm one of the producers for Kid Quake this year. We are so very excited to have you all here and glad that you're still able to make it virtually even though the library is closed today. As we begin, Kid Quake would like to give a special shout out to some of our sponsors. So thank you to the Sam Mazza Foundation and to the Office of Economic and Workforce Development for sponsoring Kid Quake. Thank you Folio Books for selling books at our event and thank you to Books Inc. for lending us space to store Kid Quake books during the year and you'll be getting some of those books hopefully soon. And finally a big thank you to San Francisco Public Library for hosting Kid Quake again this year and all the fabulous librarians whose hard work makes this event possible and also of course a huge thank you to our authors for being here. And with that I'd like to turn it over to Jen Wu who is a librarian at SFPL and our emcee for today's program. Welcome Jen. Thank you Becca. Hello everyone and welcome to Kid Quake. My name is Jen and I'm a librarian at San Francisco Public Library and your emcee for today's event. At the library I have the privilege and honor of making exciting stuff happen with a team of talented librarians specifically for kids like yourselves. If you're like me you love reading and hearing from the people who write the books we love to read. Today you will meet some wonderful talented writers and creators. If you have any questions for our authors please enter your questions using the question and answer function at the bottom of your screen. We'll have time for your questions at the end of all of the authors presentations. First we'll get started with a land acknowledgement. This land acknowledgement is a call and repeat. In other words, when I make a statement or a movement, you repeat the statement and movement. Okay. Here is the land. Here is the sky. Here are my friends. And here am I. This land together hand in hand. And thank the Rama to Shaloni, the traditional caretakers of this land. This land on which we like to play. We promise to look after it every day. Good job y'all. Thanks to those who participated. The first author today is Angela Dalton. Miss Dalton is an award-winning author of children's literature living in Oakland, California. She self published her first her first picture book. If you look up to the sky in 2018 and celebrated the release of her fourth book this year titled to boldly go. In the show, Nichols and Star Trek helps of a right. Her other work includes Ruby's reunion day dinner and show the world. Her debut early reader joyful Jubilee at Juneteenth party is scheduled to release in 2025. Welcome Miss Angela. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Hello everyone. I am so honored to be here. Thank you for having me at Kid Quake. I love this event so much. I am coming to you live from Oakland, California. And I'm really excited to share my writer's journey with you all today. So let's get started. Before I do presentations, I like to take questions that I've been asked by kids from my author visits and put them into a presentation because it helps me to share my journey. You know, those questions that you're just dying to have answers to, and especially if you're an aspiring writer yourself. So far from you to begin, who am I? Again, my name is Angela Dalton and I'm a writer of four picture books. People ask me why picture books. And what I love about writing picture books is not only putting the words together and creating characters and putting them into world building. What I really, really love is also thinking about how will an artist or an illustrator take my words and turn them into pictures. And as you can see, I've been really lucky to work with some really talented illustrators to create these beautiful, beautiful picture books. These are my reasons why I love writing picture books. Next slide. So what am I talking about today? Well, what I wish I knew about writing when I was younger. I mean, I didn't realize until I was really, really older that I loved writing that I'd always been a writer, but I didn't know that when I was younger. So I love sharing that with kids like, like all the things that I have learned since I became a writer. And I'm also going to share some stuff about how to write well too because I promised the teachers and librarians that I would. So, next slide. What did I do before I became a writer? Well, I went to college I went to University of Minnesota Twin Cities journalism school and I quickly realized I was not a good journalist. So after I got out of college, I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. And I knew that I loved everything online I love like playing video games and, and, you know, just being on websites and stuff and so I decided to be a digital producer. And what I realized was that just building websites was really boring because as a digital producer what you do is you find the creatives, and you find the developers who develop the websites. You bring them together and you get projects done. And I just really didn't enjoy doing that. So every while I became a mom, which was a super cool thing to do. That's like my favorite thing that I've become is a mom. And I love hanging out with my son but then he became a little bit older and went to school. And so then I decided it was time for me to get back to work. And I became an online game producer. What you can see as an online game producer are these two things to the right on my slide. Basically, I would work with television shows, and we would create online games and activities. And, and they were really cool and my son said that I was the coolest mom ever because he got to, he got to test all the video games online games that I did. But I like to show this slide because I like telling kids that as a writer it's not just about writing books. Being a writer you can do so many things like creating video games. So I like to tell people I like to tell kids that like it's not just about writing books. There's a lot of things that you can do as a writer. Next slide. So, why did I become a writer, well, that's third grade me to the right or to the left that you're seeing. I knew at third grade that I loved writing I love writing plays I love writing short stories. And then I would have my friends do the plays before the play perform the plays for me for our friends and our families, and I really love doing that. And so I wanted to create stories where I could see main characters who look like me in the kinds of stories that interested me. I love science fiction I love fantasy, but I never saw a lot of black people are black women in those types of stories. And then I love telling stories and I love making up worlds. And so that was another reason why I became a writer. And then, not only as a kid, but even as an adult now, writing gives me a sense of participating in my community. I love coming to events like this and sharing my story of not just the books that I write but why I became a writer, because I know there's a lot of you out there who want to become writers to. So writing is hard work. It's so much fun is really rewarding when you go through the hard work of writing a story of writing a book, and at the end of it you know you've accomplished something. And that leads me to one of my favorite quotes and I hope that you'll remember this that in this quote is by Amari Baraka, a writer and activist, and that is that art is whatever makes you proud to be human. It's so important that we find the things that are important to us that we can share into the world that are appreciated and that we can be joyful about and be proud about. So I hope whatever your creative expression is that you will put it out into the world, and it makes you proud to be a human. Next slide. So a lot of kids will ask me ideas where do your ideas come from because writers we have lots and lots of ideas which I'll show you in just a little bit. Next slide. I like to start my stories with a question. You know a lot of times it's like, what is a mystery that you'd like to solve that so that's a way that you can come up with an idea for a story. And so the next slide will show that writing is kind of like solving a mystery, you know it's the who what when we're why and how. So like for instance, The question that could be asked there is what if a kid found out he was a wizard. Well, we know what happened. He went to a cool school called Hogwarts he had cool magical friends, and they fought evil with their magical powers. This next book Harbour Me by Jacqueline Woodson is one of my favorite books, because it answers the question, how can a group of kids with nothing in common, get along. And in this book, we see as readers that the more kids share their stories the more they find out that they actually are really similar. And then finally sometimes a question can be super simple like, who's the greatest boxer of all time. Now some people might debate this but it's been known that Muhammad Ali is a pretty decent boxer. So that's what this the question that becoming Muhammad Ali answers is who's the greatest boxer of all time. So on the next slide, you'll see these are the questions that I asked about my books. If you look up to the sky, how can the sky comfort us and help us to stay connected with those who we love even if we're not close together. Maybe we're far apart and looking at the same moon can help us feel connected. In Ruby's reunion day dinner I asked the question, why is so so food so important to my family. It was a tradition that we love doing coming together as family, and everybody had a dish, except for me, and I wanted to have my own dish. And so in this book Ruby finds her dish. And finally, what are the ways that kids can express themselves to me I know that kids can be so creative and so imaginative. And sometimes we don't give you guys enough respect, or enough attention or validation for the creative things that you guys come up with. So I wanted to write a book and answer the question, what are the ways that kids that express themselves and how can we celebrate that. Next slide. But there are other ways of finding stories with to boldly go. I love Star Trek like I said I love science fiction I love fantasy, and I love Lieutenant or and the actress who played her Nichelle Nichols. And so this is a great example of about writing about the people places are things that you love. And that's the where you're going to write the best stories because there are things that you're passionate about, and you want to share with other people. And then family stories and history. That's a great place to find ideas for stories. And finally reading any writer will tell you and I'm sure you're going to hear this from the other authors reading is the best way to find great ideas for your stories. It also helps you understand, how are other people telling stories what stories are they telling, how are they building work worlds and how are they building characters. So reading could really really help you as a writer. And then ideas. So this is what I was talking about. We as writers we have lots of ideas, I probably have 50 ideas a day. And so, you know, they took this from Kate Messer so I'm sure a lot of you know she wrote she's written a lot of books a lot a lot of books like over and under series and Ranger in time. So Kate Messer came came up with this chart to show how many ideas actually become stories. You can see on the left that we have 100 ideas right and we might just write them down in a book. They might just be a sentence they might just be a snippet of a couple words they're not like a full story they're just an idea. Well out of those 100 maybe 30 actually are good idea that could potentially be a story. And we might do some writing around them. But you can see as we break it down, little by little by little and we get closer to showing our stories to our friends are critique partners. And then we show those stories to our agent they become less. And then we send them out to submission those stories become actual manuscripts that go out to editors, and then out of all of those 100 ideas maybe only one or two would become published books. So you can see like we go through a lot to actually create a book from our ideas. And so, you know who can be a writer, we all can be a writer. If you are writing you are writer and I love to show this slide that you can be an eight year old or a five year old or even a 93 year old, you can be a writer as long as you're writing that's all that's that's all that's important. And the next slide will show, I have kids that asked me a lot of times, you know what advice would I give the kids who want to become writers. And this is what I think is so important. Write something every day try new things there's so many different types of writing. You know it's not just books there's also poetry. There's also comic books. There's so many different types of writing, even video game writing as I showed you earlier. Keep coming back to pieces that are interesting to you and see how you can make them better. Revising is a great way to finish your writing, just keep coming back at it trying different things. And then save the things you create because you look back one day and see how far you've grown as a writer. That's really important. And understand how you learn things. You know we all go to school we all sit in classrooms but we all don't learn the same way and learning how the understanding how you learn will help you understand how you can become a better writer. And finally, the last slide I'm going to end here, read anything and everything reading reading reading you're going to hear this a lot but reading and for writer that is going to make you the strongest writer. And with anything that you do this is most important, don't give up, keep going no matter what anybody tells you no matter what they say whether they like or not, keep going. Thank you again for having me I hope you learned something from this, and I hope you will take anything I say whether you're right or not, and do the thing that you love to do because that's the most important. Thank you. All right, thank you, Angela. I'm sorry Miss Dalton for sharing your story that was so awesome and inspirational. So some appreciation for Miss Dalton by getting some snaps. And now to submit your questions for our authors using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Our next writer and illustrator is Jorge champ. Mr champ is the best selling every nominated creator of many things from the hit PBS show Eleanor wonders why to the hit nonfiction book for adults, we have no idea. In the hit podcast Daniel and Jorge explain the universe on the popular web comic PhD comics. He is without a doubt an expert on explaining things about the world and interesting and fun ways. He obtains his PhD in robotics from Stanford, and was an instructor and research associate out at Cal Tech. Very impressive. He is originally from Panama. Welcome Dr. Jim. Hello. Thank you miss food. Thank you to the San Francisco public library and thank you to all of the teachers often teachers that are out there with their kids and hello kids. Okay kids I have a question for you. Are you ready. Okay, here's a question for the kids. The question is. Do you want to know a secret. Now think about it. Now think about this carefully a secret is a big responsibility. Are you sure you want to know the secret. Okay, here it is. But first I need all of the teachers and all of the adults in the rooms to cover their ears and close their eyes because the secret is only for the kid. Everybody all the adults have covered their ears and close their eyes okay here is the secret kids the secret is that the universe, everything that we know about that exists the universe is like a giant part. Yeah, it's like a giant part. Okay I'm going to explain what I what I mean by that but first I'm going to take this out and now all of the adults can uncover their ears and open their eyes. I'll explain what I mean by that secret. But first I should tell you a little bit about who I am and what I do so my name is Dr Jorge Chan. I am, but you can call me Mr Jorge. And I studied for a long time to be an engineer that someone who makes things and design things. And I worked in science labs making robots, I used to design robots and fix robots and make and build them. When I became a cartoonist, someone who draws for a living and write stories. And my latest book is called Oliver's great big universe. Now when I became a cartoonist I decided to the thing that I most like to write about with science and engineering and technology and math. And so, most of my books have to do with some aspect of science. This latest one is called Oliver's great big universe. Now I imagine that you can guess who this book is about. That's right. The main character in the book is called Oliver. Now Oliver is a pretty normal typical kid. There are three things that he finds are his favorite things in the world to do. So his first favorite thing in the world that he likes to do is he likes to read. He likes to read books and he likes to read comic books. I imagine a lot of you kids out there also like to read books and comic books. The second favorite thing that he has that he likes to do is he likes to play video games. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of you kids out there like to play video games. Now can you guess what his third favorite thing in the world to do is? His third favorite thing in the world to do is he likes to play more video games. I'm sure some of you can relate to that. But the book is about Oliver and what happened to him one day. So one day Oliver meets a scientist called Dr. Howard. Dr. Howard inspires Oliver to one day when he grows up to become an astrophysicist. Now if you've never heard that word before, that means just someone who studies the universe and thinks out there in space. So astro means space, physics means how things work. So Oliver was inspired to become an astrophysicist. The only problem is that he doesn't know what an astrophysicist actually does or he doesn't know much about the universe. And so he decides to write a book about it. He decides to write a book about the universe. And so that's the book that you might be reading called Oliver's Great Big Universe, which you can get at your library or you can ask your teachers or parents about it. That's a book that Oliver writes and in the book he likes to tell all kinds of really funny stories about things that happened to him at school at the cafeteria with his friends with his little sister and home. And so I'm going to tell you one of those stories, which is what happened to Oliver one day in the cafeteria. Oh, it's a cafeteria story. Okay, so one day Oliver was in line to get food at the cafeteria and he was very excited because it was potato taut day. Yes, tater taut stays are his favorite. He loves tater taut. But there's one problem, which is that there was a kid at the head of the line, asking a lot of questions about the potato tauts he wanted to know what was in them well how they were made. So he's asking a lot of questions about the potato tauts and so he was holding up the line and so more and more kids started to come into the cafeteria and get in line. Things started to get more and more crowded in the cafeteria. Things crunched together. Mel the potato tauts started to go out into the cafeteria so kids started to get very impatient they started to say come on, I want my potato tauts and more and more kids came into cafeteria and they're all crunched together, really tightly packed together it was getting really warm and really hot, it was getting kind of uncomfortable and then. And then somebody uttered those four fateful words that you never want to hear in a crowded cafeteria. Did someone just fart. Oh no. Now can you guess what happened next in the story. The whole cafeteria exploded. All the kids started running as fast as they could in all directions, trying to get away from there as quickly as possible. So they crunched together really squeeze together, really tightly together and really hot and then all of a sudden everyone was going in all directions at the same time. That's kind of what happened in the story. Now I want you to keep this image in your mind of what happens when something like that happens in a crowded cafeteria because that image is kind of how the universe started. Once upon a time a long time ago about 14 billion years ago, the whole universe, everything that you can see out there in the universe all the stars and the planets and the galaxies, 14 billion years ago all of that was really going into space, smaller than this dot you see on the screen. Now it's actually supposed to be much smaller but if I made it any smaller you wouldn't be able to see it, but everything was once crunched together into that little dot. And then one day 14 billion years ago, the dot, all of a sudden, three, two, one, it exploded into the universe that you see today and grew really, really super fast in one second. That's called the Big Bang. And it grew really, really big. How big did the universe get? And how big is the universe now? The universe is really big, if you think about it. Now if you were going the fastest that anything can go in this universe, which is the speed of light, that's 300,000 kilometers per second, that's the speed of light. If you were going at the speed of light, you could go around the whole Earth seven times in one second. Now imagine going as fast as light. How long would it take you to go from one end of the universe that we can see to the other end of the universe that we could see? It would take you 90 billion years to go from one end of the universe to the other, going at the speed of light. And that's how big the universe is. Now there's two awesome things to know more about the universe. The first one is that nobody really knows how big the universe actually is. The 90 billion years from one end to the other is going at the speed of light is about as far as we can see, the universe might be even bigger, it's just so far away we can't see it yet. So the universe might be even bigger. Some people think maybe the universe is infinite. It goes on forever and forever. The other cool thing to know about the universe is that the universe, everything that you see is still exploding. It's still growing. It's not exploding as fast as it did in the Big Bang, but it's still growing more and more every day, sort of like you guys are still growing every day. But there's something called a very mysterious, something very mysterious called dark energy, which is making the universe bigger and bigger, sort of like if the universe was a balloon and something was inflating it. That's something mysterious called dark energy, making the universe even bigger and bigger than it is today. Now that's the kind of thing that Oliver writes in the book, Oliver's Great Big Universe. So he also writes about, there's a chapter about what it's like to be out there in space and all the things that can happen to you. For example, that you know that light can push you. If you were out there floating in space, out there in space and someone shine a flashlight on you, it would actually push you a little tiny little bit because light can actually push you out there in space. He also has a chapter about black holes and how interesting and mysterious they are. Black holes are weird because they kind of look like a hole in space. They look like a hole if you look at them from the side from the bottom from the top it still looks like a round hole and anything that falls into a black hole will never ever get out. They're very mysterious I would not recommend falling into a black hole. He also likes to write in his book, he writes about the planets like Planet Earth and Planet Jupiter and Mars and Neptune and he writes with his friend Evie he writes a comic book about the planets as if they were little kids so it's pretty funny. And they also get into a lot of trouble for writing that comic book. If you're interested to learn more about the universe, but black holes about the planets and also hear really funny stories of things that happened at the cafeteria. Please check out the book Oliver's Great Big Universe can find it in your library or talk to your teachers or your parents about it. I hope you check it out. But one other cool thing about the book that I like to tell kids is that the book is based on my son and can you guess what my son's name is. It's Oliver as well. So the character of Oliver in the book is based on my son. My son now is a little bit older. He is now a teenager. But the character is based on him. And so, for those of you that are thinking about writing or who like to write or think they might be a writer someday. Here are some of the lessons I think that you can get from the Oliver's Great Big Universe about writing. Well, anyone can write with Angela said anyone can write. You can be a writer to little kids can be a writer to just like Oliver wrote this book Oliver's Great Big Universe. The second lesson you can learn is that you can learn stuff by writing about it a lot of times you might think well I don't know enough about space or the universe to write a book. And that's the same way that Oliver felt but he by learning about it and having to write about it he learned a lot about it. So it's a great way to learn something if you want to learn about something great ways to write about and write a book about. And the third lesson is that you can always write about your own experiences just like I wrote about my son. He came home and said hey dad I want to be an astrophysicist and I asked him, you know what an astrophysicist does and he said, not really. And so that made me laugh and that's why I wrote the book. That's something that you can do as well you know a funny story that happens to you at school with your friends with your parents or with your brothers or sisters. Just write about it and so that's always a great place to start. So I encourage you to write and to read as well. And so that's my presentation. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Mr. Jorge for your creative presentation. Please show some appreciation for Mr. Jorge by giving some shine, which is wiggling your fingers. If you have questions, please submit them in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Our final author is may risk BCO. Ms. May writes middle grade novels full of heart and hope, including the house that Lou built, which won the Asian Pacific American Libraries Association honor award was an NPR best book and has been on many best book and state reading lists. Her forthcoming novel inverse is called Isabella and Bloom, coming April of 2024. She lives with her family, including two kids, one rascally dog and two pet rats in the suburban wild of Northern California. Welcome Miss May. Hello everyone. Sorry, hold on one second. Yay, there we are. Good morning everyone I'm so excited to be here with you today. My name is may risk BCO this is my dog rigs I had to put him in a different room because he goes bananas when I'm doing zoom so happy Filipino American History Month as well by the way. So this is how you pronounce my last name. And I'm an author here in the Bay Area. I write nonfiction books I write novels for readers like you. I've written for TV news stations I've written for newspapers I've written all kinds of things so pretty much my entire life. I have known that I wanted to be a writer. So we'll dig into that in just a little bit but first I have a question and I want to see a few shine fingers. I think this is an easy question for everyone to answer. So my question is, who here loves to read. Let me see your fingers. So it's pretty cool as you're probably looking around and you see a lot of other fingers going as well. You and I already have two things in common. So the first one is that I am also from Northern California. I'm in the second grade and I'm pretty sure you know that bridge, and I also love to read. The reason I'm an author today is because before anything else, I was first a reader reading and writing go together they go together 1000% and hand in hand. So what I'd love to share this morning is three quick things to make you a strong writer. I'm first I'm going to just tell you a little bit more about slime war how to win a slime war because I'm going to use some examples from this book so let me share the premise which is just what a book is about. So how to win a slime war is about a boy named Alex Manolo who wants one thing to stand out. Alex and his dad moved to a new city to take over their families struggling Filipino market in his new school Alex enters the sixth grade slime war. But the problem is that Alex's dad doesn't want him to slime he wants him to help out in the market he wants him to play soccer. He wants him to do everything else but slime so how will Alex ever stand out if he's not allowed to do the one thing that he wants in the entire world. Okay, so let me share a quick story about what inspired how to win a slime war. So this happened when my son actually similar to Dr champ son he's now a teenager he's in high school this happened many years ago when he was a lot younger. But there was one summer I went into the kitchen I opened up the refrigerator and this is what I found. What is that it's it's like it's something goofy and gooey I was finding slime all over the place in the fridge and the freezer stuck on the couch which is not where you want to find slime. And then there's my son right there it turns out that he had checked out a book from his library with slime recipes, and he was trying them out with just stuff that he found around the house like toothpaste and shaving cream and he loved it so so much. He, it was all he was doing and pretty soon we had kids from all around the neighborhood and on our street coming over every day for one summer to make slime. And I started watching them and observing them I was so curious about what they were doing and why they loved it so much. So three things to make you a strong writer, number one, all writers and artists do this. And I know that you do that as well. So I got inspired by observing. This was a notebook that I started to keep of how the slime felt of conversations I was overhearing of what I was observing with my son and his friends and that little those few pages I didn't know until they turned into an idea and then grew and grew and grew some more until they turn into a whole book. So you know sometimes the word inspiration is a little intimidating, but all it means is that you are noticing what you're curious about. So actually writing the book. I heard of my job as a novelist is to help you understand and to picture and visualize the story, a little bit better, especially since most novels don't have illustrations so what I'm doing is I'm using words to help illustrate a picture in your head. These are a few of my draft stacks, it takes many drafts to write a novel. So three things to make you a strong writer number two is use vivid details whatever you're writing it doesn't matter it can be a story and novel and nonfiction piece, a narrative a personal essay, anything you're writing in class, use details. When I'm writing details I like to use what's known as sensory details so those are details based on the five senses site sound taste touch and smell. I'm going to do a little something a little exercise I'm going to read a snippet a scene from how to win a slime or, and I want you to try and picture it in your head. And I want you to notice every time I use a sensory detail okay site sound taste touch and smell. This scene it's Alex Manalo, and by the way Manalo is at the Gallo glass name it means to win the Gallo is Filipino language. And Alex is about to walk into his family's Asian American market. So I want you to see if you can picture what the store looks like in your head. This is going to work best if you close your eyes, but you don't have to. So if you want to close your eyes as I read. Go ahead and do it now. Okay. I walk into Manalo market sunlight floods the store through floor to ceiling windows in the corner is a small seating area with a Filipino food bar savory smells waft through and my stomach growls. Long narrow aisles packed with colorful candies and crackers and mango juice boxes that go tasteily with salty dried squid snacks. Dad's behind the counter where a TV plays Filipino soap operas on low in a steady hum of the Gallo mixed with English. There's a sign that says no climbing true story that signs there because of me and my cousins gets our favorite thing to do. I zoom past the rice wall smack the bags like drums, then climb right up and sit at the very top like a king. I've spent my whole life in this market. Whenever I'm here, I always have the same feeling of home. Okay, if you close your eyes, you can open up your eyes. So as you heard, there were a lot of sensory details right sunlight floods the store, savory smells waft through the TV is playing and you're hearing the Gallo again or a different language playing in the store. I always have the same feeling of home touches the tough sense to put into a book because you know characters aren't going around touching everything but I love to think of touch as emotions and feelings. You know you want your readers to know what your character is feeling. So as you can tell you know you the more you can use details the more you can spark your readers imagination and to help them visualize what is going on in the story. So three things to make you a strong writer. Number three you've heard this already from Angela you've heard it from Jorge you're hearing it from me so that must mean it's pretty important right number three is read. How did I become an author, I became an author by reading. These are a few of the books that I loved when I was a kid growing up you've probably read some of these books they just have different covers now these covers are from the 1980s and I actually still have some of my childhood copies as well. I read these books over and over and over. So when you're reading what I want you to do is to try and take it a step further. I want you to read like a writer and what that means it's really easy. All it means is when you love a book, or you don't love a book which is okay as well. Ask yourself why you liked it or why you didn't. You know did you love a book because the characters were exciting or they were funny, or it made you feel really good it made you feel something, or maybe you don't like the book because it wasn't very clear you were entertaining. The more you can ask yourself why why you like to book. The more you start learning about how words work, how stories work. And so, again just take it a step further when you read and read like a writer. Ask yourself why you loved a book or why you didn't and you'll start learning a little bit more about how stories work. So before I say goodbye three things to make you a strong writer number one be observant. Notice everything around you. This will always bring inspiration and if you want you can keep a notebook like I did sometimes I write observations on my phone or in my computer. Number two, write with vivid details no matter what you're writing it doesn't have to be fiction even nonfiction, but you use details to spark a reader's imagination and to help them understand and visualize what's going on. And finally, number three, the most important thing the one thing I want you to take away from this entire day and webinar is to read. Read whatever you like whatever brings you joy whatever makes you happy whatever makes you laugh whatever makes you cry, read and reread and just keep reading. So that's all thank you so much San Francisco kid quick I really appreciate it and really quickly and teachers if any of you would like reading or discussion guides for any of my books please feel free to contact me via my website and I will send it right on to you. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Show me some finger hearts if you feel inspired by Angela Jorge and me today. Thank you so much. We have some time for a few questions. I hope you all were able to submit some questions using a Q&A function on your computer. So, the first question is from Gordon Jay Lau, and this goes to all three of our authors Angela or hey and may. What are who inspires you to write. We should like to go first. We could go Angela or hey and may we'll go in that order how about that. Okay who inspires me to write. Definitely my son. I hope that he's proud of me that I've written these books and they're out into the world. And that they are representative and you know kids that they're offering representation to black children to see themselves as heroes and main characters and books so my son definitely inspires me to write. For me, you know I think my biggest inspiration for writing is you the reader all of the kids that are out there that I might read the book that's I think what really inspires me and motivates me to write because you know I want to write something fun and amazing for you to learn to read and to learn about the things like the universe or things like the planet Earth or the whole world around you. That's, I guess my main expression and of course you know the book this book in particular was inspired by my son Oliver. And for me same thing I think a little combination of Dr. Cham and Ms. Dalton's answers on my family, all of you as readers and this is actually a picture of me when I was growing up I danced in a Filipino dance troupe for a long time and so my, my history, growing up Filipino American inspires so many of my stories so you know take whatever you find inspiring to you and those are all wonderful ways to spark different ideas for your, for your books. Thank you. And along the lines of family and representation. What is the first book you read where you saw yourself in the characters you were reading about. And we could go Jorge may and Angela. Yeah, what was the first book that I saw myself. I was reading it. You know, I used to read a lot of comic books as a kid, and I still, I still do a lot of comic strips. Probably, I would say one that really resonated with me with me was Calvin and Hobbs, the comic strip, and just how imaginative he was and how, how distracted he was and how much he liked to have fun. I think for me just that resonated with me. Yeah, and for me, it took me a long time before I read a book where I recognize myself and it was an adult book called America is in the heart. And I was in my, I was in college by the time I read that so I was you know in my 20s and that's a long time to go without recognizing yourself or your family or your culture and anything that you're reading. And so you know I'm really happy that there are more and more books with Asian American kids and Filipino kids and and that just gives me so much joy. I had the same experience as Mr. Specio. It took a long time before I saw myself in a book. But I would say when I was younger in elementary school I love choose your own adventure books, because in choose your own adventure you know it's written that you are the main character. So by reading those books I could actually visualize myself as the main character. So choose your own adventure like that that was a game changer for me. I have to say same. I love those books too. Yeah. I think we will do a lightning round of threes very super serious questions but short answers please because we are limited in time. So what is your, who is your favorite author. What is your favorite book. What is your favorite snack. So we're very serious questions. We'll go may Angela and then hurry. Oh gosh okay favorite author Judy bloom. Favorite book is that's like an impossible question to answer one of my current favorite books is a picture book called holding on it's about a relationship between a Lola and her grandchild and my favorite snack would be cupcakes. Favorite author Maya Dr Maya Angelou favorite book. I know why the cage bird sings because it's first book I actually saw a black girl as main character, and my favorite snack. grapes I don't know. I'm buckling here. I love grapes. I will favorite author I'll go with the comic strip author also Charles Schultz who created Snoopy for me. He's a big inspiration for me and favorite book. I'd say the best book I read in a while was the book my son wrote when he was in about fourth or fifth grade wrote a book about a video game that he really likes called platoon. And he wrote this kind of story around that and be polished it into a paper so I'm thinking a long time so we publish that at home and it became one of my favorite books. And my favorite snack is granola I love granola. Great grapes and granola very healthy. I like May's answer though cupcakes. All right. Thank you everyone as we wrap up our time together. It's been so great to be your emcee this morning, or this afternoon. Don't forget to use your scholar card your very own SFPL library card that gives you all the access to ebooks books you can read or listen to magazines or shows you can watch. Check out the library's website SFPL.org for more things to see do or read, and have a great rest of your day and thanks for joining us at Kid Quake. We look forward to seeing you at the San Francisco Public Library soon. And I'll pass the mic to Becca. Thank you again so much to the San Francisco Public Library and thank you authors. Thank you a big thank you to Angela Dalton for HM Mayor Especio so glad to have you all here with us. Everyone check out their books and thank you all so much for joining us today, and we'll hope you will hope that you'll join us again sometime in the future so happy reading and happy writing. Bye everyone. Thanks bye. Thank you.