Upcoming Events

The Orange County Reading Association’s
48th Annual Spring Conference

Bonjour! We are delighted to announce that Robin Preiss Glasser will be our keynote speaker at our 48th Annual Spring Conference which will take place on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at Concordia University in Irvine.

Robin Preiss Glasser

Robin Preiss Glasser has had two successful careers, the first as a ballet dancer and the second as an award-winning children’s book illustrator. After an eleven-year career as a soloist with the Pennsylvania Ballet, Robin returned to school at age 30, receiving her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design.

Her first book, Judith Viorst’s Alexander, Who’s Not (Do you hear me? I mean it!) Going to Move, was made into a musical produced by The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Robin illustrated two additional books for Ms. Viorst, You’re Officially a Grown-Up, and Super Completely and Totally the Messiest.

She received an ALA Notable Book Award for You Can’t Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum, and followed this with two more books in the series from author Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman.

Robin’s first book with the vice president’s wife, Lynne Cheney, was published in May 2002. America: A Patriotic Primer stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for six months, and a second book by the team, A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, followed in 2003 to critical success and another long run on the New York Times Bestseller List. Robin illustrated a third book with Mrs. Cheney, Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America, and together these three titles sold more than one million copies.

Next, she illustrated beloved radio star Garrison Keillor’s, Daddy’s Girl, and the charming A Sock is a Pocket for your Toes by award-winning poet Elizabeth Garton Scanlon, before being paired in 2005 with author Jane O’Connor for the now classic Fancy Nancy.

Fancy Nancy, which stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for 99 weeks, to be joined by Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly, and more than half a dozen other books in the series, has been translated into 17 languages, including Hebrew and Korean. More than 18 million copies of the series have been sold and the brand now includes dolls, accessories, clothing, party paper goods, puzzles, a Nintendo DS game and more.

Besides continued work on the Fancy Nancy series–which to date numbers more than 40 books and counting–Robin illustrated Tea for Ruby by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. Published in September 2008, it also became a New York Times bestseller. Robin lives in Irvine with her husband, attorney Robert Berman, children Sasha and Benjamin, and dog Boo.

The Fancy Nancy books are not only entertaining–they also promote word consciousness, or a love of words. Because vocabulary size is strongly correlated with reading comprehension, this is an extra bonus of this book series. Here is a video of Robin Preiss Glasser and Jane O’Connor discussing how Fancy Nancy came to be.

In the first video below, you can see some of Robin’s trés magnifique illustrations and some of the enriched vocabulary used in the books. In the second video below, you can watch how a teacher uses a Fancy Nancy book to teach new vocabulary and to encourage young writer’s to use fancy words in their writing. In the final video below, watch how an adult ties a Fancy Nancy book into a cooking activity where she bathes a young child in fancy words and concepts.