(Look below for a copy of an article printed June 30, 2009)
WHERE'S ATTICUS?
Let's send the book and Atticus around the world. Can we get him in all 50 states and other countries? If you know someone who owns a copy of Finding Atticus in a state or country not shown below, please contact me and we'll update the map. If you're traveling and you take Finding Atticus with you, take a picture of the book (and you, too if you'd like) in that place and send it. You'll be entered into the "Where's Atticus?" contest and could win a prize.
(laurie@lauriegiffordadams.com)
contact Atticus at Atticus@lauriegiffordadams.com
map above taken from www.worldproutassemby.org Stars added by author
Alabama - Arizona - Arkansas - California - Colorado - Connecticut - Delaware - Florida - Georgia - Idaho - Illinois - Indiana - Kentucky - Maine - Maryland - Massachusetts - Michigan - Minnesota -Montana -Nebraska - Nevada - New Jersey - New York - North Carolina - Ohio - Oregon - Pennsylvania - South Carolina - Tennessee -Texas - Utah - Vermont - Virginia - Washington - Washington, DC, Wisconsin - Wyoming
Outside the U.S. he's gone to Botswana, Africa - Costa Rica - Germany - Sweden - Italy - Switzerland - France - South Korea - Kenya, Africa - England - Portugal - British Columbia, Canada - Mexico - Caribbean Islands - Spain - Zimbabwe, Africa - South Africa - Namibia, Africa - Zambia, Africa - Puerto Rico - Nassau, Bahamas, Bermuda - China - Japan - Russia
July 8 - 27th The Wild West Tour Yellowstone National Park Old Faithful Idaho and Utah In Colorado and at the Continental Divide Mt. Rushmore July 19, 2010 Atticus goes to Russia! Here he is at St. Basile in Red Square and, below this, a photo with Atticus overlooking one of the seven "Seven Sisters" skyscrapers ordered built by Stalin. Atticus visits China May, 2010 with Mr. Faustman. At the Great Wall of China and middle at the Panda Research Center and below that posing with the Terra Cotta Soldiers in Xi'an.
Below, May 14, 2010 Atticus goes to see one of the last shuttle launches in Florida with Derek. (See the plume from the shuttle?)
April 2010 Atticus went to Arizona with Marilyn and finds a cactus. Mid-April 2010 Atticus goes on a cruise to the Bahamas and Bermuda with Jared. In Bermuda He also visited Puerto Rico with Mai (below). Atticus made his way to Africa again! This time he went to the only place on Earth where four countries meet - Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia with Hannah M's dad. Here he's sitting on that point. Atticus is in four countries at once! Here's Atticus in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Africa. Finding Atticus in Papillion, Nebraska with Clay U. Europe: Atticus with Joanna in Portugal (top), Italy (middle) and France (bottom)
Below: Atticus went to the Mexican Riviera in February with Sharon and Ron and Barb and Jerome. Above: Atticus in Stuttgart, Germany with Brent, March 1st. Below: 2/22/10 - Atticus goes to the Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia with the Lybass family. Below are two pictures of Elizabeth and another with Elizabeth, her dad and her brother, Michael. 1/15/10 - Atticus went to S. Korea with one of my students, Andy C., who moved there at the beginning of January. 12/28/09 - Atticus went to the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Some fans suspect he went for the rollercoaster. That gives a whole new meaning to his ears flapping in the wind if he did. Below: mid-December 2009 - Atticus traveled to Europe. He hit the slopes in Switzerland and France then headed to Italy. He LOVES chasing snowballs!
11/08/09 - A report from Diane in Canandaigua, NY is that Atticus is on his way to Dehlonega, Georgia! and also a report from Nancy from Colorado Springs, Colorado that Atticus is flying there on 11/09/09 Atticus has arrived in Nevada thanks to Carol P. ATTICUS TRAVELS TO COSTA RICA!!!
(Left)Atticus goes to Costa Rica with Ryan. (Right) Ryan's cousin,Sarah, meets Laurie.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Booktalk and signing at Barnes and Noble, Buckland Hills Mall, Manchester, CT
Photo on left above: Chrisy Ahlberg Amende, me and Marilyn Hepworth Watt, all graduates of Keuka College in NY. Chrisy and I graduated in 1983, Marilyn in 1952. The KC girls stick together. Photo on the right: Sisters Julia and Sarah get a booksigned.
Several of my students in this year's classes stopped by. Clockwise from top: Hailey, Grace, Pamela (and I didn't have pictures of Christina, Ashley and Ally.) I was so happy to see all of them. Zach, one of my students from last year, also attended.
Friday, September 11th Booktalk and signing at South Glastonbury (CT) Library
In the photo on the right, one
of my former students, Bobby, came with his younger sister and parents.
I was thrilled to see them again. (Sorry about the red eye effect in the picture, Bobby!)
THE
FIRST REPORT ON ATTICUS'S TRAVELS IS IN! JUNE B. FROM SANFORD,MAINE
SENT THIS PICTURE (below) TO SHOW ATTICUS AT BAUNEGBEG LAKE July
7th - Book talk and signing at the Modeste Bedient Memorial Library in
Branchport, NY. Below, a picture of Hannah, a local girl who attended
the book talk. July
3rd - Book signing at Long's Cards and Books in Penn Yan, NY. I had a
"first" at this book signing: I was asked to sign a book for "Augie", a
small dog who watched me sign his book. His owner told me she's going
to read the book to him because he's partially blind. ( I guess before
he lost his eye sight he was reading on his own!) In the picture on
the right, Aunt Kay stops by the signing. June 22nd - Book talk with a book club (adults). It was fun to sit in on the club's discussion of Finding Atticus and answer readers' questions. May 28th - Author talk at Gideon Welles School in Glastonbury, CT. Below,
Haley and "Honey", the cover models for the book, make a surprise
appearance during the visit. Meghan, a friend, is on the right. May 26th - Author talk at Prattsburgh Central School, Prattsburgh, NY Below,three of the 6th graders who won books.
Back
in my college days I had the opportunity to do an internship with one
of my favorite veterinarians, Dr. Tim Dennis from Eastview Veterinary
Clinic. He and his wife, Dawn, were a couple of the first people in
line to buy books. (below) 
Where it all started...
You may wonder where a writer gets his or her ideas for a story. Well, the ideas can come from anywhere. I can pick up snippets of a conversation and have a whole story running through my mind before the people are out of my sight. I can see an advertisement and an idea will be sparked. Certainly, movies, other books and newspaper stories are fodder for a fertile imagination.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but the plot for Finding Atticus came to me just as my mother, a minister, was starting her sermon on a Sunday in the fall of 2008. (Honest, I was listening to the sermon. I just happen to be a good multi-tasker and this story popped into my head and was knocking to get out.) I don't know if she said something just before that to get my mind whirling, or if I'd seen something on the way to church, but sometimes, that's all it takes. Once I started with the basic idea, the plot flowed out as if the story was always there.
In the original idea, the girl was going to take a horse, but reality set in with that before I'd even put one word of an idea onto the page. A horse would be VERY difficult to hide and care for, much more difficult than a dog. However, I'm sure at some point in the future, a horse story is going to "take the reins" of my imagination, and that will come to life, as well.
As a middle school Language Arts teacher, I'm always looking for a book that will capture the attention of all of my students, even those who don't like to read. I know what they're reading. I know what they think about. I know what snags their imagination. And, I know what doesn't. Laura Williams, a writer friend of mine, has always urged me to write for "my" kids. I knew I wanted a story that would appeal to boys and girls, would deal with real issues in kids' lives, incorporate their "world of technology" - to a degree and would challenge them to think about their own moral values without them even realizing it's happening. The right idea just hadn't come along, until this.
Finding Atticus is that book I'd been looking for. While reading the book, one of my students asked me if I hated Jamie, the main character. When I asked her why she asked that, she said, "Because you keep making worse and worse things happen to her." I don't hate Jamie. In fact, during her struggles in this book, I would have given anything to climb into the pages and give her a big hug. She had a rough go of it for a couple hundred pages, but I was there for her through her struggles. I never gave up on her, because I knew she could grow and learn from her mistakes. And she did.
You know, now that I think about it, Jamie is pretty lucky to have me in her life!
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Article below reprinted from The Chronicle-Express On-line edition: http://www.chronicle-express.com/news/education/x135733928/Branchport-area-native-pens-book-for-young-teens
Branchport area native pens book for young teens
By Gwen Chamberlain
The Chronicle-Express
Tue Jun 30, 2009, 08:39 PM EDT
Could a novel about a 13-year-old girl in a fictional town named Keuka Shores become a favorite read of Malia Obama’s this summer? Author Laurie Gifford Adams hopes she’ll be able to share that news with the fans of her book.
Adams, a native of the Branchport area who graduated from Prattsburgh Central School and Keuka College, has been an English teacher in a Connecticut Middle School for 24 years.
Over all those years, she learned more and more about what kind of books her students enjoyed and how they learned, but she became frustrated over choices she and other teachers had when it came to novels that could be used for teaching in their classrooms.
The students complained about how slow they were, how easy they were or how they end sadly.
“I decided to write a novel that would be a good read and a great teaching tool. having taught for so many years, I felt I had a pretty good perspective on what the middle schooler would enjoy reading, what vocabulary and other literary techniques could be used to challenge them and how to write a book that held their attention, but still left them feeling good at the end. Thus, the novel Finding Atticus was born.”
Adams, whose mother, Barbara Gifford, is the pastor at the Branchport United Methodist Church, got the real idea for the novel’s storyline during a church service in Branchport last October. As her mother began to deliver her sermon, the idea popped into Adams’s head and she began to furiously scribble ideas on her bulletin. “It took me a good four to five months to tell my mother I didn’t listen to that sermon all the way through,” she says with a chuckle.
During the long car ride home that day, she wrote the first chapter in long hand.
“Once the idea popped into my head, it just flew,” she says. The story line is built around the impact of decisions. “Impulse is a really strong thing and you need to think things through,” she explains.
When the book was finished, she printed and bound copies for her students to read as an assignment. But they couldn’t take the books home from the school, so there were times the students begged to read ahead because they were so caught up in the story.
“It was intended to get kids to read and that’s what happened. As an English teacher what more could I want to have happen?” she asks.
Because of the intense interest students showed in the story, and because other teachers wanted to use the novel as the basis for lessons in their classrooms, she paid to have the novel published professionally, and now it’s on sale at several retail outlets, including Long’s Cards and Books in Penn Yan.
Adams’s students (school name omitted by LGA) in Glastonbury, Conn. decided the book should be sent to Malia Obama, because she is their age and she has a dog. They each signed the book and sent it off to the White House. Adams said she received confirmation that the book had been received. Now, they’ll just be waiting to hear if Malia enjoyed the story as much as they did.
Adams will hold a book signing from 3 to 6 p.m. July 3 at Longs Cards and Books. She will also be signing copies of the book at the Branchport Library on July 7.