Best-Selling Children’s Author Dan Santat Encourages Creativity During Visit With Montgomery Academy Students

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) — Award-winning children’s author and illustrator Dan Santat visited The Montgomery Academy on May 5, delighting students with stories, humor and lessons about creativity.

Santat, a New York Times best-selling author and illustrator, spoke to kindergarten through fourth-grade students during the special school event. Santat kept students laughing and engaged as he read aloud from several of his books and shared how his childhood passion for drawing eventually became a career.

In the weeks leading up to the visit, students created artwork inspired by Santat’s books. The displays included a giant Humpty Dumpty sculpture based on a character from his book After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again. Expressive “birds in flight” made by fourth graders hung from the ceiling behind Humpty Dumpty. Students cut and arranged bird shapes from paper, layering wings and bodies and adding pattern and detail to bring spirit to their work.

After reading The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, kindergarteners thought about the people and things they love and imagined a friend of their own. They designed and named their “unimaginary friends,” bringing them to life with bright colors and lots of personality. Second graders drew their own “unimaginary friends” that upper school ceramics students brought to life in clay.

The third grade students were inspired by Santat’s illustrations in the book Oh No! Not Again! (Or How I Built a Time Machine to Save History) (Or at Least My History Grade). They designed their own robots, making each one a little different and full of expression.

“I do love meeting kids from all over the country, and one of the important things I like to emphasize is that we all have a common interest in reading,” Santat said. “And especially that despite where we live, we all have a lot in common more than we think.”

Santat also joked about a student portrait that closely resembled him.

“One of the students actually drew a very accurate drawing of me,” he said, gesturing to his bald head and laughing. “But just interacting with the kids and having a good time — that’s always my best part of any time I visit a school.”

Santat won the 2015 Caldecott Medal for writing and illustrating The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. Find out more about Santat here.