By: Ryan Duey
School Resource Officer Deputy Brandon Depew with the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office recently collaborated with Mrs. Nancy Heller’s Enterprise Elementary School Kindergarten class to illustrate and publish their own book.
The seven-week project covered the class’s monthly character traits. Depew said the idea of making a book came from miscommunication between him and Heller. This miscommunication in schedule turned into a weeks-long project that started with how to create a story, from the author page, genre, theme, characters, and so forth.
Depew said this book’s story is based on the character trait of empathy. Depew spoke about how the idea for the main character was created.
“Me and Mrs. Heller have a mutual friend whose niece has cerebral palsy; she is African American as well as in a wheelchair. These were two traits that we got to bring into this story that helped the kids. The kids not only got to understand the differences in skin color, hair color, eye color, and all that stuff. They got to learn that there are people out there with different abilities than what we have, whether they’re in a wheelchair or other things.”
“We had a good 45-minute discussion over what somebody in a wheelchair can still do. It definitely opened that empathy door as far as that’s concerned.”
Depew illustrated the main character, Emma. Heller said the students decided on the theme and illustrated the other characters.
“The children wanted to do a story about animals, so they each got to choose two animals. Our wonderful help here at school, Miss Chris, Miss Ashley, and Miss Heidi, each had animals that they helped them draw. The kids got to choose the colors and some of them had to do different props, like a branch for the owl, or different things that they needed in their scene.”
“They also got to do their own author page. They each got to illustrate themselves and then print their first name at the bottom, and those show up on each page.”
The completed book, Titled “Emma’s Animal Adventures,” is a 38-page book highlighting Emma’s encounter with each animal, where she is given empathy and inspiration from each character.
The book has been dedicated in honor of longtime Enterprise Librarian Joan Phillips who passed away unexpectedly. She was very well known in the community, especially with the children. The class has decided to offer the book for sale to the public in her honor, with proceeds going back to the library and school. You can find the link to purchase a softcover book or instant PDF by visiting www.blurb.com/b/12203803-emma-s-animal-adventure.
