LAKE STEVENS — Giddy fourth-graders swarmed around a brown cardboard box.
They’d waited months for this moment.
Teacher Bob Coleman opened the box and, to a chorus of his student’s “ooohs,” picked up several shiny, new hardback books.
Kids rushed forward to claim their own.
Students in three fourth-grade classes at Glenwood Elementary School wrote, illustrated and edited their own books. A publishing company turned the stories into 16-page professionally-bound books, complete with dedication pages and author photos.
“It feels cool that I actually got it to be published and that it won’t break or anything unless my dog chews it up,” said Katelyn Gilbert, holding a copy of her book, “The Journey Home.”
Her story is about three girls who are traveling from Washington, D.C., to Montana, looking for adventure, when their RV crashes. One girl’s mother is stuck in the RV bathroom; so the friends walk hundreds of miles back to Washington, D.C., to “get the dad.”
Coleman, a former journalist, let his students write about anything. Most created their own fantastical stories, but a few wrote autobiographical tales. One student wrote about his football team’s unsuccessful quest to make it to the league championship. Another wrote about a girl who dreams of being a famous gymnast, despite her parents’ objections. Inspired by a Skittles commercial, one boy wrote a modern-day Midas tale about a man who turned everything he touched into the fruit-flavored candy.
In “Super Doughnut,” Riley Gordon wrote about a boy battling mutant creatures in a dump outside a run-down hourglass factory.
“He flings his doughnut in the air because he gets so freaked out,” Riley explained, leaning over his illustrations of a strawberry-filled doughnut with a cape and frosting arms. “It falls into a pot of nuclear slime. His doughnut becomes alive and kills the creatures who were about to kill him.”
One free copy of each book was sent to the school library, and many parents opted to purchase their child’s book for $18.
Students in three first-grade classes worked together to create class books, which were also reproduced for the library.
In all, 189 books were printed, including 72 original stories.
School librarians bar coded each book and added the students’ names to the Lake Stevens School District’s online database of authors.
“One of the hardest things is to get kids to write with purpose,” Coleman said. “Here they know they’re writing a book that’s going in the library and their friends are checking it out. They put a lot more effort in it.”
In the past, Glenwood students have written stories in blank books. Some of those stories are available in the school library — and though they don’t look nearly as professional as this year’s books, they are popular among students, said Linda Mauer, a media specialist in the library.
“Bad Squirrel,” “Madison’s Pack Problems” and “Rebekkah’s Worst and Best Birthday” are the library’s most popular student-written books, she said.
“Kids like to read other kids’ writing,” she said. “I think it inspires other kids — ‘Hey look what I can do. It’s possible.’”
Coleman’s students spent months on their books. They worked on creating telling descriptions, attributing dialog to characters and pruning confusing story lines.
Though fourth-grade scores aren’t in yet, Coleman believes writing books helped his students write clearly on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning test.
That wasn’t his main motivation.
After a trip to the library, Madison Solis skipped back into Coleman’s classroom, proudly flashing her book to her teacher.
“Look at that,” he said, examining the spine of “The Gymnast and the Gold.” “You’re a published author.”
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
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