Cracking Open the Author's Craft by Lester Laminack

I just received a copy of Lester Laminack's newest book for teachers called CRACKING OPEN THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT: TEACHING THE ART OF WRITING. For those of you who know Lester Laminack, he is a children's author, an author of professional books, and an amazing speaker. Because of this combination, he has written this amazing professional book that allows us to get inside of the decisions he made when he wrote his picture book SATURDAYS AND TEACAKES. 

Since SATURDAYS AND TEACAKES is such a great book, it makes sense to teach students about the craft of writing using words from the author. CRACKING OPEN THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT digs into Laminack's decisions and gives lessons to go along with several "visual and audible" crafts. Following each lesson, we also get other books that we can use for follow-up lessons on the same topic. Did I tell you the best part? It comes with a DVD of Lester reading aloud SATURDAYS AND TEACAKES and teaching the lessons himself. He tells us at the beginning of the book that the book/DVD set can be used flexibly. As teachers, we can watch the DVD to hear the language Lester would use when sharing the craft. Or, we could just pop in the DVD and have Lester teach the lessons to our students. It is a really unique book and Lester Laminack is one of the few people who has the expertise to do something like this. He is an expert in the field of literacy and he is also a great children's author. The combination allowed him to create this professional resource on writing. The book is not due in stores for a little while, but it is definitely worth keeping on your shopping list:-)