Deborah Guarino, author of the award winning Is Your Mama a Llama?  offers her audiences a spirited, eclectic mix of story-telling, theatre, art and music. Using her various talents as writer, performer, artist, and singer Ms. Guarino directs each presentation toward its specific audience's age and interests. For the younger set she combines simple story-telling and original action-songs with lively question-and-answer sessions in which she asks as many questions as she answers to stimulate an active dialogue. Her illustrations, use of puppets and fun interactive performance pieces ensure that everyone feels truly "part of the show" and inspires even shy children to participate.

For older crowds Ms. Guarino presents a comprehensive "behind-the-scenes" look at how her current, past and future projects were created from the first sparks of inspiration to the final, produced works. Through anecdotes, works-in-progress, dialogue, illustration and exciting interactive exercises she makes sure her audience is never bored, always responsive and leaving with new sources of inspiration for their own projects. With improvisational techniques and things familiar to the audience-their current vocabulary words, for instance-she can turn an ordinary lesson into an spontaneous poem or short story-a talent teachers especially enjoy as it uses their own curriculum while demonstrating creativity in action. Students like Ms. Guarino's presentations because she literally makes them laugh ‘til they think.

Ms. Guarino is available for school, library, workshops, and other literacy events throughout the country and particularly in the tri-state area.  She is equally comfortable in a classroom, library or auditorium and has addressed groups as small as ten and as large as 500.

Author's home: Sussex, New Jersey
Suggested Audience: PreK - 6
Maximun number of presentations per day: 4
Honorarium: $1000 per day plus expenses