A quote about a recent visit to a Wyoming town

While visiting the town of Wright Wyoming, I had the wonderful opportunity to entertain the elementary, middle and high school students as well as an evening event with the fine people of Wright! My gracious host provided this nice quote about the experience - Thank you Laura!

"Matott knows his craft well. Our students in all grades K-12 were memorized by his wit, humor, sincerity towards his topics as well as those crazy faces and delightful sound effects!" --Laura Miller, Wright Junior Senior High Librarian, Wright, Wyoming

Check this out - WOW, so being a bad speller is okay?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too.

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can:

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

Can you tell me which illustration is from which book? Possible prize for first person to guess correctly!

The boys I named one of the aliens in the alien book from: Preston Walkerbot...

And their sister!

Merry Christmas from the Matotts!

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season with the ones you love!

Writing to you from????

Do you recognize the place?

WOW, do I have a short story from an experience on this beach coming soon!

The Sky Is Not Falling! Let's laugh! Let's focus on the positive! Let's READ!

There are many real life scary things going on with the world right now. I have been reading a ton of articles about the ways kids are responding to the constant negative messages coming out of the television and time and time again the advice is to make them feel safe, cared about and confident that things can and will get better. To give them examples of wonderful things that are going on right now and are not reported on the evening news (An example, Cresthill Middle School in Highlands Ranch, CO just did a canned food drive to help the less fortunate. 35,000 cans were collected in ONE school!!! Did you hear that? 35,000 cans of food collected by seventh and eighth graders and of course the lovely teachers and staff!) The constant advice to parents is to give kids hope and to provide positive, happy things to focus on rather than all of the grown up problems.

When I was a boy I remember my Dad telling me the story about Chicken Little and assuring me that my world was in fact NOT crashing down. The sky would still be blue in the morning, soon enough the low, dark clouds that had momentarily taken over the sky would drift away and sure enough the storm that was troubling me passed.

As an adult I FRACTURED the old story about Chicken Little in my book The Sky Is Falling - Little Chicken Charlie and it has become the book kids tell me is my funniest yet... How many times have we heard the sage old saying: "Laughter is the best medicine!"?

So, if you need a good laugh, pull out a copy of The Sky Is Falling or The Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Arnie the Doughnut or The Stinky Cheese Man or a Roald Dahl book (any of them will do) or a Dr. Seuss book, my favorite being Yertle The Turtle. If you need some sage advice, take it from Jerry the Dog, my narrator in The Tails Tales of Mr. Murphy and you will find as you read that you are smiling, then chuckling, then laughing and all of a sudden those things that were weighing SO heavily will fade away... at least for the moment those low, dark clouds will drift away.

Books are the "door" to the head and heart

Rossman Elementary School in Cheyenne, Wyoming honored me greatly when I visited their school last month. Everywhere you looked my books were covering the doors.

The kids were so excited when I walked in because each one of them were given a copy of one of my signed books to keep by the school. My hostess, Reva, is about the nicest person you could meet as was the rest of the staff AND students!

A special Thanksgiving feast was served for lunch, complete with Turkey, Dressing, Cranberry, taters and all the fixins! Talk about the opposite from a regular school lunch. No offense to my lunch lady friends!

After a very fun day of assemblies we had a great evening with the families who came back for more story telling and book signing (and I believe the draw bigger than me was the fact that there were nachos for all!

We wrapped up late and then I headed north to Wright Wyoming to meet more Wonderful Wyomingites! (You can see their slide show at the top left under "relevant links".

No wonder this author loves visiting schools!

THANK YOU TO MY FRIENDS AT ROSSMAN!!

Books are the "door" to the head and heart... continued...

Mr. Matott was a very personable visitor to our school.

He took the time to talk with my class individually and connected with the students on a personal level.

Leanna Frum,
Title I Tutor,
Rossman Elementary




"You should know that I do use your conversation with “the bully who wants to not be a bully anymore” when we talk about changing his behavior. I see some progress."

Lara Schiffbauer, LCSW
School Social Worker
Rossman Elementar

Books are the "door" to the head and heart... continued

Gross... There's A Fly On My Toast!