On Wednesday, I visited first- and third-graders at Dwight Grade School. During the visit, the students helped me on a special project for Book 2 in the Sarah & Katy adventures (coming in December 2015).

The first part of our project focused on choosing a name for a new creature, which will make its debut in the sequel to SARAH & KATY AND THE IMAGINATION BLANKETS. Students voted for their favorite imaginary name from a list of five options: Weepeggle, Looncan, Glomtom, Hoppler, and Fluffster.

Glomtom won with 18 votes, taking a short lead over Fluffster’s 16 votes. The others didn’t break double digits. (In fact, poor Weepeggle got no votes at all.)

With their help, I was able to choose a name for a creature. The trouble was, even though I now knew the Glomtom’s name, I didn’t know what it looked like. So the second part of the activity was a contest to describe the Glomtom.

The contest included filling out a worksheet to tell its color, whether it is furry/scaly/feathery/bald, one of its features, its silliest feature, its special ability, and its weakness.

The struggle with contests is choosing a winner. First- and third-graders can create a multitude of imaginative Glomtoms. After much review (and having to call in a second opinion from my husband to help narrow the selection), I picked a winner.

Or rather, winners. The contest resulted in a tie between first-graders Zander and Brooklyn.

MEET THE GLOMTOM

So how did the winners describe the Glomtom?

• From Zander: The Glomtom is covered in green and black scales. One feature you can’t miss about him is his eyes: one is red, and the other is blue. Be careful if you run into the Glomtom near water — his special ability is that he’s a great swimmer! Don’t shake his hand when you say hello, either, because he has claws.
• From Brooklyn: Even though the Glomtom is scaly, he has a tiny bald patch. He also has an unusually large nose for the size of his face. The Glomtom has a BIG appetite, which turns out to be his weakness — if you dangle a book under his unusually large nose, he can’t resist it. He LOVES munching on the pages of a book!