Sandy Hook Students Are Authors

By Laurie Borst

Third graders in Alison Amanzio’s class at Sandy Hook School had the opportunity this winter to write and illustrate books that were submitted to the Kids Are Authors annual competition sponsored by Scholastic Books.

Ms Amanzio offered the activity to her students as a voluntary project. The contest rules require students to work in groups of three or more. By the end of the project, the class had two groups who were able to complete their books in time for the March 15 deadline.

The two groups consisted of Chris Lafky, Austin Carfi, Peter Winans, Kyle Keeping, and James Accousti, who wrote The No Timmy Club, and Kayla Sippin, Amanda Kahn, and Sarah Mawdsley who penned The Journey in the Deep Woods of Michigan.

The No Timmy Club is a tale about a new kid who gets bullied at school. The bully, Victor, forms a club for everyone except Timmy. After getting to know each other, Timmy and Victor become friends and the No Timmy Club ends up becoming a club for everybody.

As the students discussed the process of creating their book, they were very open about each person’s contributions. Chris Lafky and Austin Carfi came up with the idea for the book. Peter Winans, Kyle Keeping, and Austin were given credit for most of the writing while James Accousti and Chris did the artwork. They acknowledged it was a group effort between the writers and the artists.

“Peter is really good at writing, especially similes,” Chris said.

Austin agreed, “Yeah, Peter’s similes made the book enjoyable. Like ‘as shiny as Uncle Bob’s bald spot.’”

They said the project was fun, but admitted they had to get serious at the end to finish.

The Journey in the Deep Woods of Michigan is a story about two 15-year-olds, Madison and Gregory, who kike into the deep woods and find a door. Once they pass through, they find a magical world and had many adventures.

The girls brainstormed for a while and decided on a boy and a girl having adventures. Michigan came up as a setting during the brainstorming. None of them had been there before but they just liked the idea of Michigan.

The story is a fantasy with three adventures in one and includes a golden dolphin and a silver whale who help the teens.

“It was really fun working together. I never did anything like it,” Kayla said. “We felt great, We were just so proud.”

Sarah stated, “We worked so hard. I’d like to do a part two next year.”

Kayla would like to make a series of the fantasy story while all would like to do it again next year.

Ms Amanzio, with the help of parent volunteer Mary Ann Jacobs, wanted to acknowledge kids work, so they made copies and bound them for each student in the two groups along with copies for the library. Mrs Jacobs helped with mock-ups of the books for submission. Students recently learned they were not selected as finalists by Scholastic but enjoyed the activity and would do it again.