Author Mitali Perkins Visits Lower School

On Friday, the Lower School at Moses Brown welcomed its first visiting author to the new Debbie Goff Library. Mitali Perkins, a writer of novels for young readers, traveled all the way from her home in California to visit with our school’s youngest readers. One of her favorite activities is visiting schools and speaking with students about her books. She describes them as having strong characters seeking community and promoting justice.

During a gathering with first and second grade, she read her book Between Us and Abuela.

Something Mitali loves about books is how they demonstrate commonalities between people who live in different places and circumstances. For example, one thing that all people in the world have in common is grandparents or grandfriends. She talked about the specialness of grandparents, talked about her own, and gave students the chance to share details about theirs.

What else do people around the world have in common? People also all have neighbors and communities. In the book, this element is explored through a festival the characters attend.

After Mitali read the book to them, they continued to discuss the themes of family and community, as well as how stories can be happy or sad, and how character viewpoints change as the story changes. It was a wonderful way for these young readers to build their understanding of people, cultures, and storytelling.

Read more about Mitali here www.mitaliperkins.com