The result of an unlikely collaboration by groups of local students is a special batch of books overflowing with wild story concepts and colourful illustrations, which will be on bookshelves soon.
The books are a culmination of a creative enterprise between Grade 6 Ecole Percy Pegler School students and art students from Foothills Composite High School/Alberta High School of Fine Arts. The Grade 6 students are serving as the authors of children’s books, which will feature illustrations from the high school students.
Foothills Composite art teacher Janie Zwack said this is exciting new territory for her art students.
“They have never done anything like this,” she said. “The illustrating of children’s books is a unique genre of art. They haven’t been able to try it before let alone have the chance to collaborate with little ones like this.”
Initially, these children’s books will be hot commodities, as only a limited number of each book will be published.
“I don’t know if we’ll actually get endorsed by a publishing company but we are planning on publishing them ourselves,” she said. “Each school will get a set, our writers and illustrators will get a set and any additional copies would likely be for friends and family.”
Percy Pegler music teacher Mike Deurbrouck said the book project will be a real eye opener for the participating Grade 6 students.
“It’s a true collaborative effort,” he said. “The kids can now see their stories come to life in a way they have not experienced before. Now when they write a story perhaps it will have more meaning to them and a real purpose. This is a real life experience in an area that some of them might pursue later.”
Deurbrouck explained a valuable part of the exercise is it’s teaching the elementary school children valuable lessons in accountability.
“They know they have to hold up their end of the bargain,” he said. “They have to make sure there are details in the story the artists can work with and vice versa. The artists have to go back to the authors and say, ‘what do you think of this?’”
One potential future best selling author is Percy Pegler’s Adam Kendall whose story in the collaborative book project is about a would-be-man of action.
“It’s about this guy who has friends that are going to go and join the army,” he said. “They ask him if he wants to go but his mom says he has to wait until he finishes school which will be one more year.”
Later in Kendall’s narrative, after his protagonist gets mom’s okay to enlist in the forces, the hero embarks on a desperate rescue mission in Afghanistan.
The young writer is looking forward to seeing what his story is going to look like in its completed form.
“I think it’s going to be really cool,” he said.
Charged with creating images to go with Kendall’s words is Grade 12 art student Bailey Page who said she welcomed the chance to work with the aspiring author.
“It’s going to be a bit of challenge because of the style of the story,” she said. “I love it though. I have a younger sibling myself and it’s cool to work with a child’s imagination and see where they can take a story. In many cases I find the younger kids more brilliant than the older kids. The stuff they can come up with is amazing.”
There is currently no hard deadline for the completion of the books. The teachers involved are hoping to have the finished hardbound copies completed by the end of the current school year.
