The library worked with Joan Simon, Media Specialist at the Prescott High School, to organize and promote the author event. Joan runs a student book club at the high school and chose Nightshade as the club's October selection. This not only created a ready-made audience for the author event, but assured that the teens came with lots of questions.
Andrea spoke about her writing for 15 minutes, then answered teens' questions for the next 45 minutes. She is young and cool and loves interacting with teens. The teens were so excited to meet the author of a popular book and were full of questions about the book and about her writing process. One teen even brought cupcakes, a sign of real devotion!
We also ran a book poster/book cover design contest during Teen Read Week and promoted it simultaneously with the author event. Contest entries were hung in our meeting room during the event for everyone to see.
Although our audience was small, the energy level was high and the teens were very comfortable asking questions.
