Stephan Pastis Wows are Students!

 Stephan Pastis visited with our 3rd, 4th and 5th graders on March 27th. Equiped with a great group of slides, he told the students about how he started out being an attorney for his career path. After ten years, he realized he really wanted to be creative and took the plunge to become a comic strip artist. He was rejected many times until he added a second character to his beloved rat, a very clever pig. (Pearls Before Swine comic strip author/illustrator)

Mr. Pastis explained his creative process. He made our group laugh as he explained his need for loud music, lots of coffee and a room with walls that he draws on to get his ideas down on paper.

He was approached several years ago to write a book for middle school children. At first, he felt he was too busy but eventually an idea came to him based on the type of stories he loved when he was that age: Detective stories. And so Timmy Failure was born!

Mistakes were Made was the first Timmy story. It was on the NY Times Best Seller list for many weeks. Soon, part two came along Now Look What You Did which is how we got to have Mr. Pastis come visit us.  Since he was doing a huge tour, The Book Stall in Winnetka asked if we would like to have him visit us here at Sears School! Well, we certainly did.

After talking to the students, Mr. P. fielded questions from the audience. He brought t-shirts, three Timmy Failure watches and temporary tattoos. We were able to have a drawing right there with him picking the names of the lucky winners.

He then signed books before heading off to his next appointment.

PS Mr. Pastis even gave our students a sneak peek at the third Timmy Failure story We Meet Again, due out in October! We will be looking forward to that!