Reading Rockets Podcasts & Videos, K-5

http://www.readingrockets.org/podcasts/authors
Meet the Author is a web page within the highly regarded Reading Rockets Web site. This page features audio and video interviews with top children's book authors and illustrators. These interviews provide an excellent way to introduce students to the creators of children's books. They also give students a chance to hear about all kinds of writing and illustrating topics directly from the authors and illustrators themselves. The writers and illustrators talk about writer’s block, books being made into movies, ideas for books, writing poetry, using fictionalized detective stories to teach scientific principles, style in writing, and many more topics.

The videos can be streamed directly from the Meet the Author site or downloaded from Google, and the audio clips can be downloaded at no cost from iTunes. Teachers can also subscribe in iTunes to automatically receive the Meet the Author clips as they are posted. Each interview also has a transcript, short biography, and list of books by the author.

A few of the authors and illustrators include the following:
Avi
Marc Brown
Eve Bunting
Bryan Collier
Gail Gibbons
Nikki Giovanni
Patricia Polacco
Jack Prelutsky
Jon Scieszka
Seymour Simon
Chris Van Allsburg

Remember to check out the TeachingBooks.net web site provided by Heartland at http://www.teachingbooks.net/home to access additional video interviews with authors and illustrators.