Grove Junior High to welcome children's author

For the third consecutive year the students of Grove Junior High, thanks in part to the generous support of their Parent/Teacher Organization and the District 59 Education Foundation, will host a celebrated children's author for the day.

On Oct. 27, author Roland Smith will speak to 6th, 7th, & 8th graders in grade level assemblies, have lunch with a group of students and teach a writing workshop to a class of aspiring young authors.

Grove students and staff are generating enthusiasm for his visit by sporting specially designed T-shirts (by a former Grove student), by focusing on some of his novels in classes and as independent reading selections, and by working on art projects to celebrate Smith's love of elephants and many endangered animals in the world.

Roland Smith has written more than 25 books, both fiction and nonfiction, and because of his life as a zookeeper and research biologist and his 20 years of caring for exotic animals, his subjects often are the very animals he has worked with and studied. One of his novels, "Elephant Run," inspired Grove's specially designed T-shirts.

Smith's visit will promote independent reading and will encourage students to learn about the animals he has detailed in his stories, believing that informed students and interested students can better protect the lives of some of nature's most endangered species.