Photos of Resau's visit to the Connelly campus are posted at http://www.connellyhs.org/page/student_life/photo_galleries
Laura Resau, author of Red Glass, spoke to Connelly students Sept. 16 at a special assembly. Red Glass, the school's All-School-Reading book, won the International Reading Association's Young Adult Fiction Award. Resau spoke to students about her writing process, her experiences living in Mexico and how her anthropological-style of research shapes her books. Red Glass took Resau six years to complete. Her talk included photos of many of the people she met while living and teaching English in Mexico - people who inspired the characters in Red Glass. She also led two writing workshops for students, encouraging them to use their senses when writing. In the workshops, she challenged students to create characters from magazine photos and write descriptively using their senses. Students were asked to describe the characters as animals or plants, and describe their smells, favorite foods and native languages. Resau challenged students to imagine what the photographed characters were like, not just in a photo, but on the inside also. Students made several mosaic walls throughout the campus, showcasing colorful paper tiles with their strongest memories and images from the book.
