By Lisa Cohn

This year, Michael and I had so much fun brainstorming kids’ book ideas with students worldwide via Skype in the classroom.

In fact, when Skype in the classroom launched its literacy campaign in February, we visited with two classrooms a week–meeting students from all over the United States and in Mexico and Australia. In addition to asking kids to give us ideas for our next book, we shared our experiences writing and publishing and answered their questions.

We loved the ideas the students gave us for our next book and are excited to say we started working on our next book, which will be a chapter book! Until now, we’ve written picture books.

Here are just some of the Kidlit ideas students gave us for our next “Bash and Lucy” book:
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Responsibility
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Cheating
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Puppies
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Bullying
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Honesty
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Pride
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Integrity
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Love
–Bash and Lucy Fetch Temper Tantrums

We don’t want to give too much away, but we can tell you that our next book will incorporate some of these ideas!

During our lessons, Michael loved telling kids about the importance of
conflict in a fiction story. In this video, Michael is wearing his Scooby-Doo suit:

While we visited with children, our brainstorming sessions were always fun and informative.

For example, these Kindergarten students suggested that Bash and Lucy Fetch kisses, treats and temper tantrums:

And here’s a lesson from last year’s Skype in the classroom lessons during which some fifth graders gave us some “heroic dogs and lost Lucy” ideas:

During these lessons, many of the children had lots of questions for Michael, age 6: How do you come up with your ideas? Which parts of the book did you write? How do you and your mom write together? How do you get the words into a book? What are your favorite books?

Michael is always happy to answer questions, and always injects lots of silliness and energy into our lessons.

We love visiting with children via Skype and in person! Learn more about our school visits here:
School Visits with Lisa and Michael

Questions? Email us at BashAndLucy@gmail.com!