Victoria Jamieson

Victoria Jamieson, an award-winning graphic novelist, writes appealing graphic novels to those between grades 3 and grade 8, such as Roller Girl, When Stars Are Scattered, All’s Faire in Middle School, Olympig, and The Great Pet Escape. She joined us on February 10th for a presentation and drawing session. Her MD Convocation presentation was about how she started, wrote, and published her graphic novels. For example, her novel Roller Girl was inspired by her love for roller derby, a sport which includes knocking people off of their skates. She wrote the graphic novel When Stars are Scattered after meeting Omar Mohamed who was looking for a co-author to write his own life story, about his life in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Then she led a drawing session with the whole Middle Division that consisted of drawing different emotions, such as excitement and sadness. She taught us how to use simple shapes and lines to convey emotions simply.

Victoria also led classes with 7th grade art students. Mr. Erdahl was instrumental in bringing her to our campus and he shared, “ One of the aspects of Victoria’s books and art work that I find so compelling is its authenticity and that many of the stories and images come from her real-life experience.” Mr. Erdahl organized a special session with his 7th grade art students.  They met with Ms. Jamieson for a whole block in the MPR. In this session she covered narrative structures and how to draw a character with movement. Students worked on a one page graphic novel page. This lined-up nicely with the 7th grade language arts project studying and writing a personal narrative. At the end of the day all 6th graders had a session with her in the Lykes. In this presentation she discussed how she created Roller Girl and When Stars are Scattered. She went into detail about how she met Omar Mohamed at a community service project helping refugees. She detailed how their collaboration blossomed to create the award-winning graphic novel. She showed reference photos from refugee camps in Africa. Mr. Beckwith and Mrs. Campagna assisted and were excited to carry on the discussion in their classes since they were teaching an Africa unit. Of course, there was another drawing session so students could improve their skill of depicting information in a visual way.

There was also a special lunch session for students that show interest in writing, drawing and creating graphic novels. This session was an extended Q & A, so students had more interaction with her. Students learned that when Victoria was little she wanted to be a Disney Imagineer, so she started her studies in animation. Eventually she moved to drawing and illustration, but was excited to share that she was working on a Disney  books project, a graphic novel that is a redo of the Parent Trap called Operation Parent Trap.

Finally, we learned that of all the Sunshine State Young Reader Award books (a.k.a Battle of the Books list) that students in Florida voted her book When Stars are Scattered as the best overall. We agree, and we are so grateful she visited our school this year.