It's a bird! It's a plane! No...it's DAN SANTAT!

Last Friday Ashaway School was visited by the incredibly talented (and somewhat silly) author and illustrator Dan Santat.  He lives in Los Angeles but was in Rhode Island to receive the Rhode Island Children's Book Award for his graphic novel Sidekicks as well as to attend the RI Festival of Children's Book and Authors.  Thanks to the sponsorship of the Ashaway PTO and the remarkable coordination skills of Meagan Lenihan of Lincoln School, we were lucky enough to have a visit to our school included in his busy schedule!

For weeks now, we've been enjoying Dan's books, engaging in Dan-centric activities (like this and this), and watching his videos.  (To see some of our favorites, click here and here and here!)  Of course, we were all super excited to finally meet him!  Soon after his arrival, two of our fourth graders stopped by the library to present Dan and me with superhero masks they had designed for us.  All of the fourth graders wore their own masks to Dan's presentation, and the second graders wore masks and capes!

Dan also enjoys putting mustaches on babies.

Dan showed the students a slide show of pictures to share what he was interested in as a kid (Superheroes! Star Wars! Comic books! Legos! Drawing!) which the students had no problem relating to.  These are now interests that he shares with his two sons, Alex and Kyle.

One thing he likes to do with his sons is create monsters.  To the left is a "Bobbie Monster" as originally envisioned by his oldest son.  As Dan put it, now you know what to call a rock monster that has a fan in its stomach.

Dan also talked about some of his upcoming projects.  Next year he plans to create the illustrations for thirteen books, which will be the equivalent of about 600 pages of art!  Much of his work is done on the computer using an electronic tablet and a program called PhotoShop.  This not only makes him more efficient, but it also affords him the ability to generate extra help:

Thanks to "the power of PhotoShop" he created a clone of himself to help get more work done.  There was an unfortunate accident with a Lego shrink ray, however.

Hmmm.  Testing out the growth ray on the cat might not have been the best decision.

Adjustments were made, but there are still a few problems to be worked out...

During his visit, Dan took some time to look over all the superheroes created by our second, third and fourth graders.  I asked him who he would choose as a sidekick, and the winner was Song Girl!  [She was one of the students featured in my Sidekicks blog entry!] She received a free, autographed copy of Sidekicks.  She can blow things up by singing, so we were glad that she contained her joy and didn't burst into song.

Dan Santat and the amazing Song Girl!

At the end of the day, Dan had a pile of books that still needed to be signed, but he chose instead to spend some time with the students who were lined up in the hall waiting for dismissal.  The students *loved* getting the extra attention.  How cool is that??

After the students were gone, Dan went back to books and stayed until every one of them was signed.  He even autographed all of the many copies that belong to the school library.  Thanks, Dan!!!

It's true!  We really do!  :)