Author Timothy Young Visited HES

On March 26, 2015 I was thrilled to have author and illustrator Timothy Young visit us at Hollywood Elementary School. He has authored and illustrated five books, including one of my all time favorites The Angry Little Puffin. 

Students in Kindergarten through Third Grade, and Fifth Grade were able to come to the Media Center to listen to Timothy Young. He talked to the students about his various jobs that he had before becoming an author. My favorite was hearing about his work on Pee-Wee's Playhouse! I loved that show! The students also got to hear Timothy Young read his books aloud. I personally find this so interesting to hear an author read his/her own work. It gives you an idea on how he/she intended the book to sound. Our morning and afternoon Pre-K students got to hear Timothy Young read his books when he visited their classroom. He even drew the Puffin for them!

As Mr. Young talked about his books, the students and I learned about a third job that he had while making I'm Looking For a Monster. This book is a pop-up book, so Timothy Young was also a paper engineer. This was his first book that was published. His other books are: They're Coming (which had to be read in a scary voice), Shadows on My Wall (which has instructions on how to make shadow puppets), I HATE Picture Books (which has a lot of childhood favorites in it), and The Angry Little Puffin (which is my favorite). Below you can watch the book trailers for The Angry Little Puffin and I HATE Picture Books.

Timothy Young is also an illustrator, so he showed the students a new method to draw. He sometimes uses this to jump start his thinking. Timothy Young started off by scribbling on a white board and then with a different color found the picture hiding in the scribbles. Soon he let the students do the scribbling, and boy did they try to stump him with a lot of scribbles! Many of the students were inspired to try this technique when they got back to class. In fact, when I went into Mrs. Schoch's class the next day I saw a few of these pictures up in her room.


As I said above, The Angry Little Puffin is one of my new favorite books! I had the pleasure of reading an advance readers copy of this book and I just fell in love with it! Puffins are my favorite bird, so I was thrilled beyond belief when Timothy Young emailed me and said that HES would be receiving a statue of The Angry Little Puffin for our library! I might have even done a little happy dance! Here is a picture of Timothy Young, myself, and the statue.


It was a great day for everyone! Thank you to the HES PTA for paying for his visit! If you missed out on purchasing one of Timothy Young's books during our pre-order sale, we will be sending home a form after Spring Break.

Happy Reading!!

Miss Hazuda (@HESMediaCenter)