That Time We Met James Dean

Our Librarian (best one on the planet, by the way) got a phone call from Barnes and Noble that said James Dean was available and in the area to come visit our school. We were ecstatic!

He was SUPER fun! The kids absolutely thought he was the coolest. And let's face it, so did the teachers. He drew for us, let the kids draw, sang "I Love My White Shoes" and read us his newest book. He sat in the audience with the kids and was the most friendly down to earth guy you can imagine.

In case you don't know the story, he really did have a cat named Pete. He was an engineer, wasn't looking to be a children's author and always loved/did art and so did his father (his father was an artist I believe). This was his original drawing of his cat Pete, it didn't become a book until a man on the street told him he wrote him a song. When he sent James Dean the song it was none other than White Shoes. Put all that together and now we have Pete the Cat and his shoe song!

He was so kind to autograph books for us and we both had then autographed for our kids at home too ;) So that inspired our November illustrator study to be James Dean. (It's not an author study because he did not write all of the Pete the Cat books).

So we combined Thanksgiving and Pete the Cat!

Take this Starbucks/Mayflower craft Amber's done for several years (thank you to whoever posted this on their blog, we LOVE this!) 

And we combined it with a Pete directed drawing! 

And there you have one cutesie Pete saying "Land Ho!"

We love author/illustrator studies! Do you do them? How often? How do you tie yours in with curriculum, holidays, etc?