Bring John Steven Gurney to Your School!

 

John Steven Gurney has illustrated over a hundred books for children, including all of the titles in Scholastic's The Bailey School Kids series and Random House's The A to Z Mysteries series. John's presentations are informative and inspiring—sure to spark any child's imagination (and pencil). He will adapt his presentation to fit the age and size of your audience.

Home: Brattleboro, VT

Travels to: John travels anywhere he is invited!

John has illustrated: The Bailey School Kids series (Scholastic); The A to Z Mysteries series (Random House); Big Apple Barn series (Scholastic); Dinosaur Train (HarperCollins); The Meanest Hound Around (Simon & Schuster); Bub Moose (Minstrel Books); Chomps, Flea, and the Gray Cat (That's Me!) (Minstrel Books); Running Wild: Upchuck and the Rotten Will (Minstrel Books); The Night Before Christmas (Scholastic); Over the River and Through the Woods (Scholastic); The Hog Call to End All (Orchard Books); and Chatterbox: The Bird Who Wore Glasses.

 

Rates

 

Half-day visit: $600*
One-day visit for schools in Vermont: $700*
One-day visit for schools outside Vermont: $895 plus travel expenses
Two-day visit: $1,600 -OR- $750/day for 3 or more consecutive days

One-Week Residency: $4,000 plus travel expenses
Evening event: $200 (available only when booked in conjunction with a school visit)

 

*Applies to schools within 60 minutes of Brattleboro, VT.

 

Click here to get started on planning your visit!

 

Biography

 

John Steven Gurney has illustrated over a hundred chapter books for children, including three of the most popular series' in America, The A to Z Mysteries series (Random House), The Bailey School Kids series (Scholastic), and the Big Apple Barn series (Scholastic). He has illustrated six picture books, including Dinosaur Train (HarperCollins), which he also wrote. In addition to illustrating the board game Guess Who for Milton Bradley, his drawings have appeared frequently in Cricket magazine and advertisements for Nabisco, TV Guide, Molson's, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. John also works as a caricature artist; at the close of his presentations, he draws a caricature of an audience member.

John grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He studied art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and drew caricatures on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the summers. He lived in New York City until 1997, when he moved to Brattleboro, Vermont where he currently lives with his wife and two children.

 

Click here to read an interview with John Steven Gurney.

 

Event Description

 

John Steven Gurney's presentations are informative and inspiring—sure to spark any child's imagination (and pencil). He is available for elementary, middle school, and high school visits and offers two styles of presentations. Schools may schedule any combination of these presentation styles when booking a visit. For example, a school visit may include four presentations and one workshop. John is also available to sign books upon request.

 

Ideal Presentation Lengths

 

Kindergarten & 1st Grade: 40 minutes
2nd & 3rd Grade: 1 hour
4th Grade & Older: 1 hour, 10 minutes

 

John understands that many grades are sometimes grouped together for presentations. He is flexible and would be willing to adapt his presentation to the age and size of the audience. As a parent of elementary school aged kids, John is well accustomed to a certain amount of chaos.

 

Presentations

 

John brings a number of his actual paintings along with displays containing prep sketches and photographs. He shares with students his background, the creative process as an author and illustrator, and he touches on the business side of his craft. Each visit includes a slide presentation that lasts between 15 and 35 minutes, depending on the size and age of the group. He always closes by drawing an 18 x 24 caricature of someone in the audience.

 

Click here to view one of John’s presentations!

 

Workshops

 

John also teaches a variety of cartooning workshops for smaller groups of students. For younger students, he may focus on drawing simple characters and faces. With older students, he focuses on bringing more personality to their drawings.

One workshop combines writing and drawing by focusing on constructing a story from randomly assigned characters and settings, then illustrating the story.

Another workshop is centered on drawing caricatures, emphasizing basic drawing principals that can be applied to faces as well as other subjects. During this interactive workshop, John chooses a student from the group to draw. As he draws the volunteer, he discusses basic facial structure, line usage, and how to measure forms against each other. Students are asked to pair up, giving them a chance to draw and pose for one another while John walks around and offers illustration tips.

 

Click here for a fun cartoon drawing lesson with John!

 

Click here for another fun cartoon drawing lesson with John!

 

Sample Illustration

© 2002 John Steven Gurney. Reprinted from Dinosaur Train (HarperCollins).

 

Click here to get started on planning your visit!

 

Testimonials

 

“Wow! The school is a 'buzz' with wonderful words of praise concerning John's presentations yesterday. Of course everyone is in awe of hid artistic ability, but more than that, they loved how he weaved the reading and writing in with the drawing process--and the series of steps you have to take to get to the final product! He opened their eyes to a whole new world that is attainable if you think it.”
—Catherine Riley, Reading Specialist, Levittown, PA

 

“WE WERE VERY IMPRESSED!!! We have had about 14-15 authors come to Muscatine--John was our first illustrator and we were so thrilled with his presentations...He is a super guy--very flexible and very kid-friendly...”
—Beth Elshoff Librarian, Muscatine, IA

 

“Mr. Gurney's talent radiated through each of his many sessions. He was patient with the broad range of students pre-K through grade 4 and flexible with adults. Additionally, he was an attentive listener to our young authors. It was a great day!”
—Rosemarie Hagerty, Literacy Teacher, A.M. Chaffee School, Oxford, MA

 

“Your presentations were very effective and interesting to all the kids! You were the buzz around school all day, and at home my son spent the afternoon drawing in his bedroom!”
—Pietra Sylvester, Mater Christi School, Burlington, VT

 

“We were very, very pleased with John's visit to our school and we definitely want to invite him back in the near future. If every author visit went as well as his did it would be wonderful. He was informative, funny, inspiring, and very personable with the children and the teaching staff.”
—Carol Ethier, library media specialist, Dover Elementary School, Wilmington, VT

 

“John was very funny and had a nice way with the children. He ended his presentation by drawing a caricature of one student from each of the groups. The children loved it!”
—Elizabeth Bissell, librarian, Newfane Elementary School, Newfane, VT

 

If you are interested in booking an event with John Steven Gurney, please fill out the Speaker Visit Query form or contact our Author Appearance Manager at 800-338-2232, ext. 105, or admin@authorsinschools.com We look forward to working with you.