Acting Out

Six masterful children's authors have become master playwrights in this collection of one-act plays that might just make you want to ACT OUT!

In The Raven, Sharon Creech spoofs a publishing office while Susan Cooper shows the environment fighting back against overdevelopment in The Dollop. Patricia MacLachlan puts a twist on detention in The Bad Room and Katherine Paterson gives us a new twist on a classic fairy tale in The Billionaire and the Bird. Richard Peck's Effigy in the Outhouse is the story of schoolboys doing their best to trick a spooky substitute while Avi's Not Seeing Is Believing has words playing tricks on everyone.

With a star-studded lineup of writers there's a stage full of drama, comedy, and great storytelling waiting behind these curtains!

Newbery Medal-winning and beloved authors Avi, Susan Cooper, Sharon Creech, Patricia MacLachlan, Katherine Paterson, and Richard Peck have come together and written six original one-act plays to be read, shared, and acted out by the audience they know best.

The playwrights could write about anything and anyone they wanted, but one thing would need to tie the stories all together. Each author had to choose one word and share it with the group. These six words then had to be written intoeach of the plays.

The words they chose were "dollop," "hoodwink," "Justin," "knuckleball," "panhandle," and "raven." To find out the funny, odd, and creative ways they were used...Well, you'll have to read for yourself.

Avi is the author of more than seventy books for children and young adults, including the 2003 Newbery medal winner?Crispin: The Cross of Lead. He has won two Newbery Honors and many other awards for his fiction. He lives with his family in Denver, Colorado. Visit him at Avi-Writer.com.

Susan Cooper is one of our foremost children’s authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her many books have won the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and been shortlisted five times for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in?Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten for Children novel), King of Shadows and Ghost Hawk, and her magical?The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan Cooper lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts, and you can visit her online at TheLostLand.com.

Patricia MacLachlan is the author of many well-loved novels and picture books, including?Sarah, Plain and Tall, winner of the Newbery Medal; its sequels,?Skylark?and?Caleb’s Story;?Edward’s Eyes;?The True Gift;?Waiting for the Magic;?White Fur Flying; and?Fly Away. She lives in western Massachusetts.