Author entertains Marblehead elementary school students

MARBLEHEAD- Martha’s Vineyard author Kate Feiffer visited Marblehead’s elementary schools Wednesday morning and, judging by the crowd of 70 first graders in the Gerry School gym she was a hit.Feiffer has written three picture books for children, “Double Pink,” illustrated by Bruce Ingman, which the New York Times praised for “economy of style and understated wit,” the recently published “Henry the Dog with No Tail,” illustrated by her father, cartoonist and children’s book writer Jules Feiffer and the forthcoming “President Pennybaker,” illustrated by Diane Goode.Her visit was scheduled to last an hour – it was the third of three appearances that morning – but the children wouldn’t let her go until she read all three books to them and they had “ooohed,” “aaahed,” giggled and groaned over every last plot twist.Feiffer seems to pack a lot of kid-style irony into every story and the children seemed to love each little plot twist. Hands went up all over the room when English Curriculum Coordinator Katherine Scheidler asked if the kids like to read. They shot up again when Feiffer asked if they like to write and everyone chimed in with an “awww” when Feiffer showed them a picture of her dog, Henry. It was a visiting speaker trifecta.Henry is a tailless dog who gets an artificial cloth tail from a tailor and has trouble adjusting. Feiffer used a prop, a stuffed dog with a 20-foot cloth tail, to show what that tail looked like. When she turned the last page, the kids applauded wildly and, at her urging, several of them took turns creating their own dog story on the spot, about a dog with a Smiley Face tail. He ran away when the other dogs teased him and he was so sad he told his tail to be quiet when it tried to comfort him. The ending: “Then he went to a dog show with his tail and got really famous.”Just in time for the fall election campaigns, “President Pennybaker” deals with Luke Pennybaker, a boy who is never allowed to watch television no matter how much work he does at home. Luke runs for president to make life fair and, before he’s finished, the White House has been painted orange and a lot of people are getting free ice cream.Feiffer, a film-maker who worked as a television producer in Boston and New York before moving to the Vineyard to raise a family, made her first trip to Marblehead last year to show one of her films to high school students, because Scheidler invited her.Overjoyed – and maybe a bit overwhelmed by her young audience – she seemed glad she made the trip.”They really reacted,” she said.