Next month, my new picture book MARVELOUS CORNELIUS comes out. The amazing paintings were done by John Parra. The book is the story of a New Orleans street performer/garbage man named Cornelius Washington. It’s also a Hurricane Katrina story — this August marks the 10th anniversary of the storm.

Today, I’m excited to share the official book trailer for MARVELOUS CORNELIUS.  Here it is!

The most exciting part of this book trailer — at least for me — is that it was created by 4th graders! Yep, for the last several months, I’ve been working with Mattie, Elena, Kameron, Macee, Ashleigh, Jordan, Elena, and Erin from Swenke Elementary School from Cypress-Fairbanks ISD in Texas. These kids did an incredible job. It was such a rich, shared learning experience.

I visit Swenke Elementary every year. The librarian, Angie Arnett, coordinates my annual visits to Cy-Fair ISD. Angie is one of those librarians who always goes the extra mile in order to create memorable experiences for her students. She understands the importance of instilling a life-long love for reading in the kids that pass through the doors of Swenke.

Through projects like this one, she succeeds.

Thanks to Melissa Manlove, Lara Starr, Jaime Wong, and everyone at Chronicle.  Y’all were so supportive and helpful with this effort. The kids (and me) are over the moon that their work is now featured on the Chronicle YouTube Channel.

Hootie-Hooooo!!!