Harry Bliss' Presentation

Picture Book Artist and Cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine

Current Location:

Burlington, VT

Honorarium:
The fee listed below is only the honorarium and does not include expenses which the hosting organization must pay for.

$2,000 per day

Program Description:

Essentially, I have three parts to my presentation.

1. Twenty-minute slide show about my books, my cartoons, and myself.

2. Ten to twenty minutes of Q and A with the kids.

3. Twenty minutes of drawing for the kids.

Part one includes silly, psudo-biographical slides about me, which are designed to make kids laugh out loud. Following are slides from my books for children. I describe how I construct the books -- from manuscript to finished art. I finish with a slew of kid-friendly New Yorker and Nickelodeon cartoons.

Part two is a simple question and answer.

Part three is drawing with the kids. I play a scribble game in which I call, one at a time, a few volunteers to draw a simple scribble on the middle of a large pad of paper or dry erase board. I then have to turn the child's scribble into a picture (lion, dog, landscape, SpongeBob!) - kids adore this exercise. It gets their visual imagination motivated by way of free visual association. I often ask for help from the children in figuring out what to turn the scribble into. This is an exercise kids can play with one another long after my visit ends.

If time permits, I love to read aloud my latest book.

My presentations are generally geared for first through fourth grades.

Group Size:

Large audience: 50-100 students

Small audience: up to 40 students