{"id":114383,"date":"2019-03-06T09:08:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T14:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=114383"},"modified":"2019-03-07T09:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T14:05:12","slug":"author-spends-day-with-vw-middle-school-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2019\/03\/06\/author-spends-day-with-vw-middle-school-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Author spends day with VWMS students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, Van Wert Middle School students took the \u201cOne Book One Day\u201d challenge to read an entire book in one day, in this case, Shelly Pearsall\u2019s All of the Above<\/em>. Guest readers came in to help start the program off, while students and teachers completed the reading task throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Author Shelly Pearsall speaks to Van Wert Middle School students on Tuesday in the First Federal Lecture Hall of the Niswonger Performing Arts Center of Northwest Ohio. <\/strong>Dave Mosier\/Van Wert independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This month, VWMS students had the chance to hear from the author, who visited the school to talk about her books and her struggles to get her writing published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pearsall, a former classroom teacher herself who grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Parma, and later earned education degrees from The College of Wooster and John Carroll University, has been writing since she was a young girl. However, she didn\u2019t get her first book, Trouble Don\u2019t Last<\/em>, published until 2002. That book received the prestigious Scott O\u2019Dell Award for Historical Fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, Pearsall has had five other books published: The Seventh Most Important Thing, All of the Above, All Shook Up, Crooked River<\/em>, and Jump into the Sky<\/em>. Two of those books, All of the Above<\/em> and The Seventh Most Important Thing<\/em>, are American Library Association Notable Books, while all six books have been on state reading award lists and received a number of honors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, Pearsall gave a 45-minute talk to each of VWMS\u2019 three classes in the First Federal Lecture Hall of the Niswonger Performing Arts Center, but also had lunch with small groups of students in the VWMS Media Center, and signed books throughout the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though she has been writing for many years, Pearsall said it was a struggle to get her writing published. To prove it, she showed students a poster board filled with rejection letters from various publishers, as well as Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> and other periodicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Noting that she kept the letters to provide motivation to continue her writing, she told students that her own love of reading was what originally inspired her decision to become an author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the One Book One Day program at VWMS, each VWMS student received a free copy of All of the Above<\/em>, which is based on a real incident where Cleveland-area students worked to set a Guinness World Record for making the world\u2019s largest tetrahedron — a geometric design formed by triangles on each of its four sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pearsall\u2019s appearance at the school was made possible through a donation from former Van Wert High School graduates Tom and Cheryl Compton, with assistance from former city school psychologist Randy Gardner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although much of her writing is based on actual stories she has heard, Pearsall said she brings her own perspective to her writing. She also urged students to write about their experiences and the things that are meaningful to them, since successful writers tend to write about the things they know about, or have experienced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor Last month, Van Wert Middle School students took the \u201cOne Book One Day\u201d challenge to read an entire book in one day, in this case, Shelly Pearsall\u2019s All of the Above. Guest readers came in to help start the program off, while students and teachers completed the reading task throughout the day. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-04 01:28:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}