Have you ever wanted to feel like a rock star? Does the thought of sharing your kidlit books with their intended readership pump you up? Are you interested in asking thought provoking questions only to have an eager student tell you about their dog?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then school visits may be for you. And you will definitely want to watch (or read) this interview with Celesta Rimington and PJ Gardner to find out more.
By PJ Gardner
PJ
Hi, I am PJ Gardner, author of the Horse and Bunwinkle series, The Great Zoodini, and the upcoming Worst in Show, all from HarperCollins. And I am chatting today with Celesta Rimington, who is also a friend of mine, who is the author of The Elephant Girl, Tips for Magicians, and the upcoming Reach, which I have read and is fantastic.
And then we also co-wrote the book Tools Not Rules, a writing guide. Oh, shoot, I can't remember. Tools Not Rules: a Writing Guide for Young Creatives.
So today we're going to chat, though, not about what we've written together, but about school visits. Celesta has done quite a number of them. And she does not feel like an expert, but compared to me, I feel like she's very much an expert. So we're going to chat about those today.
Celesta, let's start with, how did you get your first school visit?
CELESTA
My first school visit happened right in the middle of the pandemic. My first book, The Elephant's Girl, debuted in May of 2020. So everyone watching this will understand schools were closed, and bookstores were closed, and libraries were closed, which is a really hard time to launch a book as a debut author, especially when no one knows who you are yet.
So we pivoted a lot and started doing things online and over Zoom. And I reached out to a couple of friends of mine that lived in my neighborhood that are elementary school teachers. One in particular was teaching fifth grade, which is right smack in the middle of my target audience, and was preparing for the upcoming school year in fall of 2020 of things that she wanted to plan for her students.
And so I reached out to her and I said, what do you think about having me Zoom in and do an author visit with your class that way? And at that time, that was, I think, kind of a novel idea. We do that all the time now and do virtual author visits, but it felt kind of novel at the time. We're all learning Zoom, at least I was.
So I reached out to her and she said, that would be a wonderful idea. And I said, I would love to offer a school visit to your classroom for free because this is my first one. And I would love the opportunity to learn.
And would you give me feedback on what your students thought about it and if it was engaging or what I could maybe do better next time? And I brainstormed with her a little bit about some ideas of what I could talk about that would resonate with her students, that would help them get excited about reading and get excited about writing their own stories. So we chose the topic of creating a hero. And so I did some slides and I got online with her and practiced a little bit because I hadn't done this before, sharing my screen and all that.
So that's the way I first got a visit. And I think for me, it was a great entrance into it. It was less stressful because this was a friend of mine.
I wasn't getting paid for it. I was offering it for free and she was going to give me honest feedback on it. And then it ended up being great.
She shared it. We talked about this and she asked if she could, and she shared it with her cohort of teachers. And she shared about the visit with, I think, a Facebook group of teachers that all taught the same grades in the district.
And that kind of helped spread the word, not just about my author visits, but also about my book.
PJ
That's fantastic. So the technical part, I have never done a virtual visit where something technically didn't get weird or go wrong. And I'm sure that's the same virtually and in person, right?
CELESTA
The technical always is the thing you have to be willing to think on your feet and pivot and have a couple of backup ways you're going to share things. If you have a video with sound that you need to share, whether it's virtual or in person, you need to have a backup of what you're going to do if the sound doesn't work or the video doesn't work, what are you going to do instead? Because a lot of times they'll work, but sometimes you'll have to do... I've done crazy things like brought my own Bluetooth speaker and use that or put the microphone they gave me, and this is for live visits, put the microphone they gave me next to my laptop to get the sound from that because the sound was not connecting to their system. And we even had their school specialist there working on it.
So you just have to have a couple of different ways to solve the problem and think, I know my presentation well enough that I can pivot if this doesn't work.
PJ
Okay. So what are the best parts of doing a school visit?
CELESTA
The best parts to me are that face-to-face personal interaction that you get to have with your readers. As a middle grade author, that's just ideal to me to be able to interface directly with these third through sixth graders, answer their questions, be authentic and available to them.
Because studies have been showing that for students, even those who are reluctant readers who have a personal type interaction with an author, they are 90% more likely to read the book. And we need them to read. There's a country and with children today.
And for me, that is so rewarding to see the light that comes into their face when they realize they're talking to a published author. I get funny questions all the time where they ask if I'm famous and they ask if I'm rich and I am neither of those things, but they just assume that we are. They think that they're meeting a movie star of sorts because they saw your name on the book and they saw your picture on the book jacket and here you are for real.
But that is nothing to do with me. What I'm saying is the excitement is seeing how excited they are, which you can then turn into an excitement for reading and excitement for writing their own stories and an acknowledgement that they are unique and that their voices are unique and that they have something that they can share that comes directly from them in their own written words and seeing that light come into their eyes and then even getting like feedback from either students through emails later or teachers later saying, thank you so much. My students came back to the classroom and they don't want to stop writing.
And I do think it is a talent that you can cultivate if it's something you really want to do. But you have a question about that a little bit later.
PJ
I do. I do. And I was just sort of thinking like the interactions. I've done one school visit and one of the little girls, I think she was third grade, came up afterwards after her class was leaving.
She's like, I think, yeah, I think you're my favorite author. And it was so sweet. And especially because I was like, before yesterday, you had never heard of me.
I was like, oh, that's so sweet. You do create connection. And in fact, so that's really, that's really important.
PART 2
"And so I think for authors, you just need to look at, am I a person who loves to travel? Am I a person who needs a lot of recovery time after being out of my house and away from home to get back into my creative life?"
PJ
Okay. So talked about the best. And we talked about this a little bit earlier before we started recording. What are some of the hardest things about school visits?
CELESTA
So I thought about this question and I would say my answer for that is there's two sides to it. One thing that is, I would say the hardest on the business side is it can be very time consuming to set up the visits, arrange the details. If you're going to get paid for it, there are a lot of forms to send and fill out.
And depending on where you're doing the school visit, some districts have a lot more paperwork intensive processes that they require of you to register with their district or their state as an independent contractor, go through possibly some background checks. There's a lot of things like that that can happen depending on where you are and what district you're working with. And that's just part of it.
And, and I just recognized this is, this is all, it may feel excessive, but it's all set up with the intent of protecting children. And that matters. That absolutely matters.
So to me, it's usually worth it. I mean, obviously it's always worth it to protect the children, but I mean, as far as like the time it takes away from your writing time and your creative life to do all this business-y stuff, if you aren't a wealthy author and you don't have an assistant that you can pay to do all of this stuff, it can take a lot of time away from your creative time. And I have clocked some school visits that I was preparing for and in communication with schools about that I easily spent, I don't know, maybe 10 hours of my time over a period of several months emailing back and forth and, and doing their application process and going on their contractor website with the district, things like that.
So that's hard, but the actual visit itself, I would say...
PJ
I want to add something though, really quick. It's 10 hours over that time, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it is a lot. Can you talk a little bit about why, because it would seem to me like it's not just the time you spend actually doing it.
It's the amount of time you're, you're having to think about it and make plans and all of that, right?
CELESTA
Right. It's the preparation. What are, ironing out the details, if they're going to pay you, how much that W-9 or, you know, sending, sending all of the tax paperwork.
Yeah. It's, and a lot of times there's not really a boiler plate that I've been able to find that fits for every situation. You can prepare some emails that you've already written that answer certain questions, but every district and every visit is going to be nuanced and there will be different questions.
So responding to those emails can take some time.
PJ
Okay. So, okay. You were going to say something else and I interrupted.
CELESTA
And the other thing I was going to say, maybe the hardest part of doing the visit itself when you're actually, and I would say this is maybe a little bit more regarding the in-person visits than the online ones. We talked about technical issues, but I wouldn't say that's the hardest part.
I think for me, because I do these school visits because I genuinely care about kids this age. The reason I write middle grade is because I relate to that age. I remember it so strongly in my own life.
It was such a formative time for me. And it's when I developed my love for reading and stories and my desire to be a writer. And so that matters to me, that emotional lives of the children matters to me.
So it's difficult to be there in person and recognize that you can't answer every question. You can't talk to every single one of them. If it's a big assembly of 500 kids, even if you're doing a signing, your chances are, you're not going to talk to every single one of them.
You also can't bring up everybody who raises their hand to volunteer for something. If it's like audience participation and involvement and you ask for some volunteers, you can't select everyone. And that to me is an emotional hardship in the sense that I don't want to leave that visit having any child feel bad that they didn't get chosen.
So I was going to say one of the things that I do to combat that, that I hope helps, and I hope it helps any authors watching this is when I go into the visit early and I'm preparing and I meet my contact person, the librarian or whoever set up the visit with the school, I will ask them to help me identify whether it's the teachers or the librarian themselves, who are those individuals, those educators are going to call on students instead of me. Oh, and that makes it so there's a buffer so that I, as the author, am not the one who didn't choose them. And that can be super important too, because the teachers also know what students are going to be engaging and which ones are going to be a bit difficult and derail your presentation and kind of make it difficult to bring everybody back.
And so I ask the teachers, I'll say, okay, from the third grade row, this teacher here, will you choose someone from your class to ask a question? That way I'm not the one who didn't choose somebody.
PJ
Right. I had a thought and I lost it. School visit, I can't remember. All right. It'll either come to me or won't.
Oh, I wanted to ask you, is not travel a part, like a little bit of the hardship?
CELESTA
It can be.
PJ
Now you're in a new town and now you're renting a car and now you're driving to places you don't know. So there's just a certain stress level to that, right?
CELESTA
It can be, especially if you're somebody who thrives on being at home.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that's not a bad thing. Introverts can go do school visits, but you got to go back to your hotel room and kind of recharge your energy somehow. And so I think for authors, you just need to look at, am I a person who loves to travel? Am I a person who needs a lot of recovery time after being out of my house and away from home to get back into my creative life? Then you want to sort of build your pricing into that.
And that can be tricky, but some schools have grants and different ways that they, and fundraisers and ways that they set up to have the money to pay for an author visit. And just consider, are you somebody that you want to build a little bit into your pricing because of the time it takes away from your home and your family and your creative life and writing your next book?
PJ
Oh, so I do know what I was going to, that when you were talking about picking on the, choosing the kids, not picking on them. I remember on Twitter one time, and I cannot remember who said it, but she had done school visits and she said, she said she had to remind herself that, that, you know, like when you're, the kids sit, you know, they raise their hand and they have a question and they repeat a question that has literally just been answered.
Right. She said, I have to remind myself, it's not the question and it's not the answer that they will, they will walk away with. It's the fact that they got to interact with an author.
That's really all they'll remember. So she, she's like, she said I could be, and then I can be more patient. And that definitely has helped me with virtual visits when, you know, like six kids in a row are kind of like, well, what did you do this? And I'm like, I know I've answered that, but it's really, they just got a chance to talk to a real author.
Okay.
CELESTA
That's true. I recognize that as well.
A lot of times I'll have kids raise their hand and they, they for sure had a question, but it goes out of their head as soon as they get called on. And, and then they tell me the name of their dog or something, but they just wanted to talk to me.
And I think that is very important to remember. If you want to do school visits, think about your audience, what matters to them? And why are you doing this? How can you have a positive effect on them so that they go home at the end of the day? And they're so excited about life books, talking to their parents or their guardians about that they got to meet this author, um, and something you inspired them, something that you inspired in them.
PJ
All right. So our last question is what advice would you give to authors looking to do school visits?
CELESTA
My first advice is, um, think about why you want to do them and what does success with that look like to you? Does it look like I'm going to make all this money? That may not be the best approach because it can be really frustrating.
And a lot of schools don't have the money, um, that you might want to get paid to do, um, a visit. Um, does it look like interacting with your readers and that that's rewarding? You can still ask to be paid, but think about why you want to do it and how you can make a positive effect, a positive impact and influence on the kids that see you. And I, when I said, it's not about me earlier, I appreciate what you said that it, it, it requires, uh, a bit of honing a skill, you know, to go in and inspire kids.
Um, if you don't think that's you, if you're not naturally exciting and bubbly and, and, and it's difficult for you to build up that level of energy, think about a big gymnasium full of 500 kids and the amount of energy that you have to project in order for them to feel it. And then what if they don't send that energy back to you, you have to keep putting it out there. So think about that.
If that's not for you, then I would say, try out some online visits, see if you like those. Um, but not everybody is going to feel suited to do school visits. If you really want to do them, you need to be persistent.
You need to be patient and you need to think outside the box because sometimes it takes different ways to make a school visit work for both you and the students and the school.
PJ
That's fantastic. Now I'm wondering if people might be asking, are there some very practical, uh, things like, are there any places I could go, uh, to find school visits or like, are there websites that would help with it? Yeah. That's sort of like, like more of a technical way of finding a school visit. Um, I don't know if you could speak to that.
CELESTA
Um, there are some things that may be available that I'm not aware of, or I'm not a part of.
I know that there are speakers bureaus and some publishers have a speakers bureau that you can contact and apply to where the idea is that they, they put you in their system and may help you get speaking engagements. I'm not sure how much they do for schools. So I'm not involved in anything like that.
So I can't really speak to that. Um, but what I've done that other people could easily duplicate is if you know, any educators, either in your area or in places where you have friends or family that you could go visit friends and family and stay with them to save on cost. Um, and that may be those friends and family in another state have, um, friends whose kids are in a particular school district, or they might have a friend who's a teacher at a particular school, kind of go through your network that way and see if you can get some contacts by reaching out to people that, you know, who know people.
I think that can be like a really good place to start.
Another way you can go is to look on the district website for a district in your area or a place you're going to be and reach out to the literacy specialist or this, the district, um, media specialist and just inquire about, um, you know, can I bring, can I'll be in town? Can I bring an author visit to your schools?
PJ
That's fantastic. Thank you.
Those are, this has all been wonderful. I'm grateful that you joined me. I think we've shared some really wonderful things and from both Celesta and I, we wish you good luck, uh, getting school visits and on your writing journey.
So thank you. And I guess that's it.
CELESTA
Thanks for having me.
About Celesta Rimington
Celesta Rimington is the award-winning author of magical middle grade books including the upcoming Reach (releasing January 27, 2026 from Nancy Paulson Books.) She has presented to thousands of students throughout the country about resilience and writing their own stories. Her highly-praised first novel, The Elephant’s Girl, won the Reading the West Book Award for Young Readers and was named on eight state lists. Celesta holds a degree in social psychology and resides in Utah where she can often be found in the boxing gym or exploring mountain forests with her family and her Yorkie, Winston.
Learn more about Celesta’s author visits and the inspiration behind her books at
She lives in Southern California with her husband and sons, a mischievous cat named Kaiju, and a rambunctious Boston Terriers named Rocky.
Learn more about PJ at pjgardnerswitzer.com
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