Community Library hosts author Denise Fleming

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Calde­cott Honor-winning Ohio children’s author and illus­tra­tor Denise Flem­ing was in Sun­bury recently, thanks to fund­ing pro­vided in part through an Insti­tute of Museum and Library Ser­vices LSTA Grant awarded by the State Library of Ohio.

While Com­mu­nity Library hosted Fleming’s Big Wal­nut visit, the event was held across the street in the Sun­bury United Methodist Church’s mul­ti­pur­pose room.

Dur­ing day­time ses­sions with Big Wal­nut dis­trict ele­men­tary stu­dents, and an evening pre­sen­ta­tion, Flem­ing shared her book The First Day of Win­ter. There was also audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, and Flem­ing demon­strated how she cre­ates art for her titles.

“In total we saw day­time atten­dance, includ­ing morn­ing and after­noon school group ses­sions, over 800 peo­ple,” said Com­mu­nity Library Children’s Ser­vices Direc­tor Fonda Kendrick. “After over a year in the mak­ing, it was really fun to see every­thing come together, and even bet­ter to watch the kids hav­ing a great time dur­ing Denise’s presentation.”

Flem­ing, who goes out about 10 times each year for events, said she had a great time inter­act­ing with both the chil­dren and adults.

“I enjoyed the kids’ reac­tion to things,” Flem­ing said. “They get so wound up and enthu­si­as­tic. Their teach­ers pre­pared them really well.”

Flem­ing said she does not often do school assem­blies; she does more pre­sen­ta­tions at uni­ver­si­ties and early child­hood con­fer­ences where she works with teach­ers on ways of teaching.

Flem­ing attended the Kendall Col­lege of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michi­gan, where she stud­ied Illus­tra­tion. After work­ing in the com­mer­cial art field and free-lancing as an artist and illus­tra­tor, at age 40 she decided to pur­sue her dream — she wrote, illus­trated, and pub­lished her first children’s book.

Fleming’s 21st book will be pub­lished soon, and all of her works are still in print.

Com­mu­nity Library Direc­tor Chauncey Mont­gomery said he is pleased that a part­ner­ship with the Delaware County Dis­trict Library, the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict and Sun­bury United Methodist Church made Fleming’s visit possible.

“To me, I couldn’t think of a bet­ter part­ner­ship,” Mont­gomery said. “Com­bin­ing Fleming’s visit with the Delaware Library, we coor­di­nated the Big Wal­nut visit, the school dis­trict bused the kids over, and the Methodist Church pro­vided the space we needed.

“The stu­dents were all really atten­tive,” Mont­gomery added. “They were really well behaved and seemed into what Denise was pre­sent­ing. Hope­fully they were all inspired.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Nov 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.