Marjorie Watkins and I did our first school visits with her books, Rotaida and the Runestone, and Royal Spy (I illlustrated Royal Spy). That's me on the right saying, "RoTAI DA, RO TAI DA!" We look a little bind because we took our glasses off for the camera. 

The clothes we are wearing are from the era, Charlemagne's time in 800 A.D. We dyed them with onion skin and tumeric to imitate as closely as we could the dyes that would have been available at that time.

The kids seemed to enjoy our readings and our attempts to take them back before cell phones and Ipods, and their teachers smiled the whole time, so I think we were successful. The kids asked great questions and had interesting comments. One girl thought she couldn't live back then with out her cell phone, but her classmates reminded her that she wouldn't even know about cell phones, so she would be fine. We had discussions about herbal medicines, how our ideas of trolls might have come from people with birth defects being cast out from the community, about travel being easier on water than on land.

It was great fun, and we plan to do it again. And again.