I’ve been fortunate to have traveled to ten communities in Coastal Alaska in the last four months as part of my Alaska Reads Tour. It’s been tricky, and at times exhausting, balancing my teaching job with my Alaska Reads commitments but well worth the effort to meet with readers of all ages all over Alaska.
Here’s a write-up from the Wrangell Sentinel of my most recent author visit. Wrangell is a small community is Southeast Alaska accessible only by boat or plane.
A big thank you to the Alaska Center for the Book for choosing my novel Surviving Bear Island as the 2022-23 Alaska Reads Book.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019), an Alaska Battle of the Books Selection, Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), the 2022 Alaska Reads Book, a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015) has been chosen as the Alaska Reads book for 2022.
The official Press Release is below.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
As a full-time special education teacher, doing author visits to schools can pose some challenges. My job doesn’t stop when I’m not in my classroom. Over the years I’ve used part of my Spring Break to do school visits outside of my own school district.
But often, the requests come from within my district or from within my own school. I like to be accessible for local kids who are reading my books so at my school if a teacher is using one or more of my books in their classes I’ll pop in for a question & answer session during my prep period.
When I get an invitation from another school, I’m sometimes able to work out using professional leave to cover the visit. I do a few of these each year, also question & answer sessions for classes that are using my books.
In general, I have found these sessions to be extremely enjoyable because they are so interactive: the students have a lot of ownership over what happens.
Also, Q & A sessions don’t require much preparation on my part so I can drop what I’m doing in my classroom and switch gears without a lot of stress. I ask the teachers and librarians involved to have kids prepare some questions ahead of time as a starting point.
Recently I spent a school day at Tanana Middle School. I met with seven groups of students for question & answer sessions. I met with every student in the building in groups ranging from 25 to 70 students. When it was time for English class, they came to the library.
On this particular day, half the school was participating in a vow of silence for 24 hours. Some students came with whiteboards and wrote their questions out and held them up. Others typed them on an IPAD and they appeared on a big screen.
I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged the “vow-of-silence” students were and at how the room would focus whenever a whiteboard was held up or a question appeared on the big screen. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time about the vow-of-silence activity because I would have worried about whether there would be enough student engagement for dynamic conversations and all of my worry would have been for nothing.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.
Follow The River hits the shelves today–my fourth novel to come out in six years.
It’s a Junior Library Guild Selection in the High Interest Middle Plus category—meaning that it “will appeal to even the most reluctant middle-school readers.”
It took a few years and many drafts to get the story to where it is today.
Many thanks to my editor Eileen Robinson and my agent Amy Tipton.
High Interest character driven stories with page-turning plots are what I strive to create with my fiction. Years and years of working with struggling and reluctant readers inspired me to write books they would connect with.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection and Hostile Territory (Macmillan Jan. 28, 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020. Forthcoming is Follow the River (Move Books August 20, 2021) . You can order all of Paul’s books here.
After a few pandemic-related delays, I’m thrilled to announce that my newest middle grade adventure novel, Follow the River, is a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2021. Follow the River hits the shelves on August 20th but you can preorder it now.
From the Jacket Flap: When Billy and his dad are injured, Tom summons the courage to get back on the water to save them. This time, he must travel in a rickety old homemade canoe through the Alaska wilderness to get help. But it’s not just the canoe and the terrain he has to worry about—he’s surrounded by adversaries. Are his skills enough to fight them off or will his journey be cut short and Billy and his father left stranded?
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection and Hostile Territory (Macmillan Jan. 28, 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020. Forthcoming is Follow the River (Move Books 2021) . You can order all of Paul’s books here.
My debut novel, Surviving Bear Island (Move 2015), is a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Scholastic Reading Club Pick. Its sequel, Follow The River (Move 2021) also a Junior Library Guild Selection is my most recent work. I'm also the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019), and Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020). When I'm not writing I spend lots of time exploring the roadless areas of Alaska on foot and by kayak. I also teach reading and writing. I am represented by Amy Tipton of Signature Literary Agency.
You can contact me at paulgreci(at)yahoo(dot)com
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