I had the opportunity to read a story to the first-graders at the Ynez Elementary School Last Friday

We had the pleasure of meeting Ellen Tou who is the Instructional Specialist at the Ynez Elementary School in Monterey Park,CA. She came to our Wednesday meeting for a very informative meeting.

"Ynez School is know for its tradition of academic excellence as evidenced by the recognition it has received as a California Distinquished School in 2002 and 2005, as well as being recognized as a California Title I  Achieving School in 2005,2006 and 2007. The academic success of our students is atrributed, in part, to the spirit of collaboration and cooperation among the students, staff and community"

Please open this link

http://www.alhambra.k12.ca.us/schools/documents/YnezElementary2006-07SARC.pdf

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 We had the honor of having Oliver C. Chin at our weekly Wednesday Luncheon

He inspired all of us by showing his children books all written by him

Here is something about him

Oliver Chin

Oliver is the author of children's books The Adventures of WonderBaby, Timmy and Tammy's Train of Thought, and Julie Black Belt. He is the creator of the Tales of the Chinese Zodiac series: The Year of the Dog, The Year of the Pig and The Year of the Rat .

Previously in 2002 he wrote The Tao of Yao: Insights from Basketball's Brightest Big Man, which Publishers Weekly called a "clever twist on the traditional sports biography" and The Honolulu Advertiser praised as "meticulously researched and will interest the phenom's thousands of fans." In the same year he wrote and illustrated the graphic novel 9 of 1: A Window to the World which received 2003 Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Myers Award that "commends works that extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power."

Oliver had spoken on NPR, FoxSports and Pacifica Radio, and at colleges such as Yale, MIT, Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC, USF Center for the Pacific Rim, University of Michigan, De Anza, San Francisco State University, and City College of San Francisco. He has read at diverse community venues nationwide such as the US Census Bureau, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, De Young Museum, Oakland Museum, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Bowers Museum, Kidspace Children's Museum, Huntington Library, and Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles.

Called a "comics expert" by the San Jose Mercury News, he has conducted comics workshops at dozens of public libraries and schools, and is an entertainment columnist for Comics and Games Retailer magazine and reviewer for Comics Buyer's Guide. Having graduated magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard, where he was the cartoonist for the Harvard Crimson, he lives in San Francisco, CA with his wife and two sons.