Margriet Ruurs - A Natural Writer

What would a hen think about having her eggs gathered every morning? From that question hatched

During her assembly, Mrs. Ruurs wowed students with samples of her early drafts of her books and demonstrated for them the process of how the books were put together. Along with her expressive readings of the stories, Mrs. Ruurs handled questions ranging from how many books she's written to where the ideas come from for her stories.

Mrs. Ruurs talked about the process of writing a story and struggling over each word until it's just right. She also explained how the publisher will select an illustrator for the story, transforming it into a book that she doesn't get to see again until it is published. Even the printing process is quite involved. The color pages are printed three times, each with a different color ink, until all the colors are created.

Another book which Margriet talked about was A Mountain Alphabet. As the wife of a park ranger living in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Margriet decided to create a book to tell others all about mountain life. Each page describes one part of that life using a particular letter of the alphabet. Even her own children are represented in the drawings of the rock climbers and snowboarders.

An interesting thing also happened when illustrator Andrew Kiss went to work on the drawings for A Mountain Alphabet. As he drew the pictures for the page representing "G", the branch of an old tree strangely seemed to form the letter "G". That gave him the idea to hide a letter on each page of the book. Now readers can not only enjoy the pictures and words of the story, they can challenge themselves to find the hidden letter.

Another one of the students' favorites was Virtual Maniac. This book of poems includes the one from the title which is about a child who spends so much time playing video games that he forgets about everything else. She said she got the idea from watching her own children play video games to the point of forgetting losing track of everything else.

While writing might be hard work, Mrs. Ruurs believes everyone is capable of it. During the afternoon, she worked with kindergartners through eighth graders  explaining writing techniques and ideas to get kids started. Everyone has stories and poems which can be written down, Mrs. Ruhrs said.
 

Mrs. Ruurs appeared through a grant from Cesa 10. For more information on books by Margriet Ruurs, check out her webpage and that of illustrator Andrew Kiss.

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