By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
A partially eaten piece of pizza, soccer and Taylor Swift may seem unrelated to the average adult brain. But to kids at Crim Elementary, they are the makings of a great story.
Elementary children across Bowling Green knew they were meeting author Jarrett Lerner on Wednesday. Little did they know that he would turn the kids into authors themselves.
As part of the annual 1BookBG program, every elementary student in Bowling Green – whether in public, private or parochial school – was given a book written by Lerner, who creates graphic novels for kids.
Kindergartners through second graders got “Geeger the Robot.” Third graders received the Halloween friendly “Scare School Diaries.” Fourth and fifth graders are reading “Enginerds.”
Lerner’s books that encourage kids to write and illustrate their own stories are also being incorporated into the program. And his book “Hunger Heroes” has inspired a collaboration with the Christian Food Pantry and the Brown Bag Food Project.
The students got their books last week. On Tuesday, kids and their families met Lerner at the Wood County District Public Library, and on Wednesday, the author visited schools.
Students greeted Lerner like a rock star. And he greeted them like they were budding authors.
First he gave them a little bit of confidence.
“You’re going to make the story. I’m just going to walk you through it,” he said.
The first must-have ingredient for a story is a character. And in order for a story to be “extra awesome,” the character must be compelling.
“That means you are drawn to them like a magnet,” Lerner said.
He explained the role of a protagonist. “A protagonist is a fancy way to say the star of a story.”
Lerner confessed that many of his books have food as characters.
“I like food. I think about food a lot,” he said. “I think about what I’m eating next, and what I’m eating after that.”
(Lerner revealed that his favorite foods are bananas and peanut butter – refusing to rank one above the other. He also divulged that nearly every one of his books includes at least one illustrated banana.)
So he asked the students for food ideas that would create a tasty main character. Hands shot up and a long menu of items were shouted out as worthy of playing a big part. After a run-off vote, pizza beat out a cupcake for the protagonist role.
Next Lerner started sketching on an easel, trying to turn a piece of pizza into someone readers would recognize and care about. He cautioned the students about expecting perfection in their illustrations.
“It’s not going to come out right the first time,” he said. “It’s never, never, never once for me. That’s how it is for everyone.”
To aid in the plot, the pizza slice really needed legs and a mouth, Lerner said. But even with those body parts added, the pizza still looked like a triangle with sticks underneath.
“Someone might think it’s a taco chip. Someone might think it’s a traffic cone,” Lerner said.
So the students brainstormed about how to make sure readers would have no doubt that the triangle was pizza. Again, hands burst into the air, as students threw out ideas of adding pepperoni, a squiggly line at the bottom for the crust, and some bite marks on the sides.
“These are great ideas,” Lerner said, feeding into the kids’ enthusiasm.
Then came the dilemma of how to distinguish this piece of pizza from all the others in the world. Lerner suggested the slice be given a name. He selected a hand from the back of the gym, resulting in the pizza being named “Foot.”
Lerner didn’t shut down ideas that might have been difficult to build upon. He just went with the flowing imaginations, and asked students to fill in the character. Turned out that Foot lived on Pizza Planet, and was a pretty good soccer player.
“A soccer player named ‘Foot.’ How perfect,” Lerner said.
Now a partially eaten piece of pizza might seem an unlikely protagonist, but to clinch the role, the slice needed to reveal to readers a “want” that isn’t easy to achieve.
Someone in the audience introduced the idea that “Foot” had a dying desire to meet Taylor Swift. That sent hoots and hollers up from the students.
“That’s something a lot of people would want,” Lerner said.
Another student tried building on that plot, and said “Foot” was lonely and needed a girlfriend. Lerner nipped that storyline in the bud before it could develop further.
“That sounds like a separate story,” he said.
But something was still missing. The drama had a main character, who liked to play soccer and desperately wanted to meet Swift.
“What’s wrong with this story?” Lerner asked the kids.
It was too easy. “Foot” needed to encounter obstacles in his quest to meet Swift.
“You need it to be tough for them. We need to see them getting knocked down and picking themselves up.”
So the wheels began turning in the minds of the attentive students.
They didn’t disappoint… When Swift came to Pizza Planet for a concert, she was swarmed by other food items and “Foot” couldn’t get through. It started raining, and the pizza slice got all soggy. And when it didn’t look like it could get any worse, a river of lava began flowing into the concert venue.
“Oh my gosh,” Lerner said with great excitement. “An explosion of a Pizza Planet volcano.”
When he asked if they would read a story like they had just written, nearly all the arms in the gym went up – teachers’ and students’.
“It feels like an adventure because it is,” Lerner said, encouraging the budding authors to write more stories at home and in their classrooms.
Getting students to write their own stories ranked right up there with bananas and peanut butter for him, Lerner said.
“I want to get you guys excited about reading and making your own stories,” he said.
