Am 9. November kam Tamara Ireland Stone gleich für zwei Lesungen an unsere Schule, eine mit zwei Kursen des 11. Jahrgangs, eine mit einer 9. und einer 10. Klasse. Sie hat unsere Schülerinnen und Schüler begeistert, wie der folgende Bericht einer Schülerin der 9. Klasse zeigt.
Visit of Tamara Ireland Stone at our school
On November 9th, Tamara Ireland Stone, an author from San Francisco, visited our school because she has won the award „Buxtehuder Bulle“ with her book Every Last Word. Therefore she stayed in Buxtehude with her father for one week. During this time she was visiting schools, looking around the city and finally she took part in the award ceremony.
When she was at our school, my class and another class were sitting in the library with our English teachers. First Mrs Schröer gave Tamara a very warm welcome, she answered: „It is so lovely and such a huge honor to be here.“ Then she told us something about herself. For example she said that she didn’t need awards but she needed us to read her books and to like them, make us smile or cry or maybe start to write. She writes books only for us.
She started to write when she was 38 years old because she always wanted to do this, but had never written books before. Her first book was Time Between Us. She also showed us some other books. After that she showed us some photos of her life: her family, her friends, herself and what she does. She told us stories for every photo. Tamara really likes to travel and she and her family do this as much as they can.
Before she was reading an excerpt from the book Every Last Word she told us a little bit about the story, about the main character and about the reasons to write this book.
Afterwards she asked us whether we had questions and we had many! Tamara answered with lots of patience and with many details.
Finally it was possible to go to her to have her sign our books. She also had some bookmarks for us and everyone had a little conversation with this really nice, friendly New York Times bestselling author.
It was an awesome experience and in return my class wanted to thank her. Each of us wrote some comments on post-its. We gave her the envelope with our post-its at the award ceremony. Tamara was deeply touched.
Because of this amazing presentation we are all looking forward to reading this book in our English lessons!