EDUCATION: Youngsters create book, win national award

What started out as a Nevada Reading Week activity in February ended with award-winning authors from Paradise Elementary School.

Laurie Grosenick's third-grade class entered the Scholastic Kids Are Authors contest and earned one of 25 honorable mentions out of 2,000 national entries.

The 17 students wrote, illustrated and published "East Meets West: A Tail of Two Horses," a 21-page comparison between the Nevada Mustangs and the Chincoteague ponies native to an island near Virginia and Maryland.

Grosenick and reading specialist Sue Hendricks thought learning about the two species was a nice segue to the fourth-grade Nevada history curriculum. Although Grosenick had heard stories about the Chincoteague ponies, she couldn't find any elementary-age literature about them. So, the class decided to forge its own.

"It was a natural extension of my job," Hendricks said. "It sort of fell into place. We couldn't find any books so we said why don't we just write our own?"

Half of the six-week project was spent on background information before the story or illustrations were conceived. Geography, science, history, art, grammar, vocabulary, storytelling and math were skills used to design, write and complete the book.

"They practiced a lot," Grosenick said. "Then, we took everything away and said 'Now you have to do it on your own.' "

Using a horsefly named Musko as their narrator, the children debated and voted on every aspect of the book from the illustrations used to their narrator's name.

"We didn't want to put any of our words in there," Hendricks said. "We taught them about horses, so they had enough background information to write something on."

Because of the school's high transient rate, Grosenick said some of her students who participated won't get to reap the benefits of the success, which is, along with the book, a motivational tool.

"It covered the whole range of curriculum third grade needs to cover," Hendricks said. "And it was so motivating."

"It's the best way to learn," Grosenick said. "Integration is a wonderful learning tool. They enjoy it, and they internalize it. When they don't internalize it, they don't learn it."

Because learning was going on in different subjects simultaneously, the children didn't realize they were absorbing the information.

"When anything is motivational like that they are learning in spite of themselves," Hendricks said. "The process was interesting to them, and the story was too. When you integrate the math, they don't realize math is happening. ... It happens naturally during the learning process."

Since Grosenick announced their placement in the competition, the students haven't stopped beaming, she said.

"We learned lots of interesting things, and we got to write those interesting things in our book," said Letisha Montiel, 9. "We made a book because we decided on it. (And) we used a lot of scratch paper."

"It was hard to draw the pictures because, for me, it was hard to draw the horses because they were big," said Ideko Flores, 9.

For Courtney Lee, 9, "seeing everyone actually like it" and earning an award was the best part of the project.

"I knew it was good," said Julio Diaz, 9. "It was kind of the best."

In addition to their award, the students will finish out their last week of school with a visit today from Mayor Oscar Goodman, who will listen to a reading of the book by the authors and illustrators.

"It made it real," said Hendricks of the project. "It's real world stuff. It's not just on a piece of paper."