Marty Chan Author Visit

We enjoyed a visit from author Marty Chan this afternoon.  He is from Alberta and writes books for kids.  We also found out that he writes plays and stuff for radio and television too.  He was a very funny presenter.  He told us that he likes to write about things that happened to him as a kid.

In his first series, he chose to write mystery books because he liked reading the Hardy Boys mystery books when he was a kid.  His first books were this series of mystery novels:

Photo Credit: Carr McLean

Our teacher is reading the "Mystery of the Cyber Bully" in class during snack times to us.  In the book, there is a scene where the kids are tossing around a bunch of back packs.  Cheyanne asked him if that really happened to him.  He told us no, that part didn't happen, but he made it up to include in the book.

One of our classmates even got to help him act out a scence from one of his books!  In this scene, our classmate is throwing a ball in a game of Dodgeball at Mr. Chan.

He then told us about the second series he is writing.  This series is all about a sasquatch.  He has always been interested in learning more about legends of creatures like sasquatch, so he decided to write this series.

Photo Credit: CanLit for LittleCanadians

As he was telling us about his interest in these creatures, he showed us a replica of something that was found.  In this video, you can see him showing it to us.  Some of us were too freaked out to watch him reveal it!

He told us about a time when he went camping with a friend and his friend's Dad really spooked them out that there was a sasquatch in the area they were camping in.  He had gotten up during the night and tripped on something in the dark.  In the morning, when he looked at what he had tripped on, it was a great big footprint.  He had it made into a mold and this is what it looked like:

He ended his presentation by having a few people from our audience work with him to tell a story -- it was very entertaining!

Mr. Chan has also written a funny picture book about his cats.  Our teacher read it to us this week. 

Photo Credit: Canadian Review of Materials

Our teacher was looking around his website and found that he has some tips for students when they write.  You can check it out here.

We were wondering...

Have you read any books by Marty Chan?
What authors have you heard speak?