Kindergartners in Fairview Early Childhood Center might have a stronger appreciation for the literary world these days, in the wake of several weeks of focusing on writing and illustrating their own book.
Kids and their parents and teachers gathered Monday evening to celebrate the occasion, with cake, a puppet show and a signing party as part of the mix.
"Lylah's Red Hair" is now on the market at 308 West Martintown Road, North Augusta.
"Basically, I just wanted the children to understand the importance of thinking, and getting the thoughts out of their head and onto paper," said teacher Dion Davis. "They use their imagination all the time. When they're playing with their toys, they can tell you all these stories and create all of these characters. That's the basics of writing a book."
"The book is about Lylah's red hair," said Ila Jarvis, 6, a redhead who served as the inspiration for the book's main character, who faces such antagonists as Smashing Chomper and Sawcutter. "At the end, there's like a big fireball that Lylah shoots out of her hair."
Davis said she brought up the idea of producing a book in August and received the kindergartners' immediate rejection. She continued, however, to ask them questions about story plots and to encourage them to come up with alternate endings.
"By November, they were ready to write their book," she said.
The build-up included "a lot of critical-thinking activities, higher-order questioning - not 'yes' or 'no,' but questions where they had to actually explain and predict and make inferences - so ... they didn't even realize what they were doing," Davis said. "I scribbled out all of their thoughts and we took all of their thoughts and they turned it into a book."
Ila, Davis added, was "kind of thrilled" about having helped bring about the idea for the book's main character.