Author Spotlight - Tim Green

This weekend I was so excited to go to a Children's Literature Breakfast hosted by Anderson's Bookshop.  Anderson's is an independent bookstore in Naperville, Illinois.  I met Suzanne Collins, who wrote The Hunger Games, there in the fall.

On Saturday, they had four keynote speakers who are authors or illustrators.  I was lucky enough to meet Trent Reedy who wrote Words In The Dust, Kathryn Lansky who wrote The Capture (Guardians of Ga'hoole, Book 1), Weird Al Yankovic who wrote When I Grow Up, and Tim Green who wrote Football Genius.  I get so excited to meet authors because I love the books they have written.  I love the characters and their stories and it's so interesting to me to learn about the author who wrote them.

Meeting Tim Green was probably the highlight of the day for me.  He sat at our table for breakfast so we were able to ask him questions about his book and about football.  He was so nice and ready to talk about books and sports.  He played for the Atlanta Falcons but is now a lawyer and is writing some great kids' books about sports.   I recently read Football Genius and absolutely loved it.  We love football in our house, so I loved reading about a boy who gets to meet and help one of his favorite football players win games.  I'm excited to read the rest of the series and also read his more recent baseball series.

Tim Green told me this about being an athlete in the NFL and now writing books for kids:

"I feel like I’m able to shine a light on a world that is incredibly interesting and violent and fightening and heart-warming.  I think it is such a rich, rich backdrop and I’m the only one who’s doing this...I think that’s the thing that I am most proud of about my own work, that I am able to shine a light on a place that no one else is so that it’s sports but it digs so much deeper than any sports books that are out there."  

I'm always curious about where readers like to read, so I asked him about his ideal reading spot and this is what he had to say:

"In the summertime down on my dock, at the end of the dock on a chair.  I love sitting in the sun and be out right on the water and just reading a book."

Here's a picture of me with Tim Green!

The next book in the Baseball Great series comes out on March 22, 2011.  I'm excited to be able to recommend these fun football and baseball books to any kiddo who loves sports - whether they play sports or not.  

If you can come to school and tell me the title of Tim Green's book that is coming out in March, then you will earn one sticker towards a reading reward.