7-12 year olds publish book
“It was exciting because I never thought I would get to create my own book and publish it.”
These were the words of Addy, a 10-year-old, who is now a published author after collaborating with seven other kids between the ages of seven and 12 in a workshop held by Little Authors last July.
Following the printing and binding of their work, the authors and their family (many from out of town) gathered at the future Grafton Market Friday night for a book signing party.
The book in question is “Mission to Mars,” the tale of Tay, a boy whose dad accepts a job on Mars so the family moves from Erath and gets used to their new life on the red planet, complete with new words (each author had to contribute a word to the book) and even food.
“The most surprising part of the book to me was the rocks and socks soup,” said Little Authors’ Michelle Dummar, who said she was impressed by the way the group worked together.
“When they would get together and one kid would start talking about something, another would jump on and add to it,” Dummar remembered “It would snowball and turn into something so cool… It’s not like there was any bickering or arguing; they just fed off each other’s imaginations, and it just grew.”
One of the m o r e industrious ideas that came was to make the book bilingual. Open it one way and the story is presented in English; flip it over and the story is in Spanish.
All of the young authors said that the story took different turns than if they had written it themselves with 12 year-old Ana saying she had to draw bigger scenes than she had in the past and Weston and Emery choosing to write comics and stories about things like horses respectively.
The families of each author remembered their child coming home excited about the work they had done after the workshop and reported that the experience had spurred them to keep creating their own art and stories.
Little Author’s Carmen Andersen announced that the book will be available online and they already had many advance copies sold so after each author present read a page of their choosing, they took a seat behind their name card and commenced to signing dozens of copies.
Dummar said they plan to host another workshop this summer and looks forward to being surprised by the next group of young creators.