The Cupcake Boy Make-A-School Project. Pictured here are the student illustrators standing in the shape of a cupcake with a cherry on top.
Purple and orange cupcakes matching the Cupcake Boy Cover
The Cupcake Boy and cupcake fundraiser. Purple and orange cupcakes matching the Cupcake Boy Cover. What a pleasant surprise this was.

The Cupcake Boy

A story about learning to live a life of passion.

Illustrated by Amy Belle Elementary School
The Cupcake Boy. A story about learning to live a life of passion. By Scott Stoll.

Synopsis: The Cupcake Boy is the story about a boy who makes the most beautiful and tasty cupcakes in the world; however, the villagers take the boy for granted. So disheartened, he leaves his home wondering: “Why should I bake cupcakes for a world that doesn’t love me?

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Little Known Fact

The Cupcake Boy is the allegorical sequel to Falling Uphill: The Secret of Life.

More about this book: This children’s chapter book is full of rich, conceptual drawings that complement a story. The young students keep adding new levels of fun and inspiration to what I imagine possible. And this time we got hundreds of drawings of cupcakes from tiger flavor to worm flavor. This was a very challenging book for me to write in a kid-friendly manner. In many ways, it is a sequel to “Falling Uphill: The Secret of Life” because it is a coming-of-age story about returning home, where the Cupcake Boy learns to see the joy of his labors and learns how to use his passion and the lessons of his “mistakes” to create the life of his dreams, which not only includes cupcakes but a community for those he loves. The book also includes a page of challenges to help kids find hidden surprises in the story.

Make-a-book project interactive coloring books
One mother was kind enough to send me this photo: “My kids thought your book needed a little color”. I think this is a great surprise.

Educational and Inspirational

Every book in the Make-A-Book project has two main themes: it’s both educational and inspirational. You can see a little of both in the pages below.

A boy licking a cupcake. His head is simply drawn, a circle with a half moon mouth.
Sometimes students get stuck but with a little encouragement, this picture turned out great. I love the simplicity of the illustrations. They convey so much beauty and meaning with such few lines.
A delicately drawn cupcake with little flying cupcakes in the sky.
We had several naming contests. They got to choose the names of the characters and create new flavors for cupcakes. I then assigned the flavors to the class to illustrate.
The Cupcake Boy page 60
The greedy Cupcake Boy drawn as a pig-shaped cupcake. In this scene, the boy is looking down on his village realizing how small it is, yet how big his impact had been.
A city full of skyscrapers made of cupcakes
A picture that shows the legacy of passionate work.
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Acknowledgments: Thanks to the 412 students and their parents, teachers and the staff of Amy Belle Elementary School for making this book possible. Special thanks to Arma Ezekiel Purdy for her passion and vision to see this project as an opportunity to foster community by seeding new ideas and empowering children with a real-life project. Without Arma, this book would never have gone beyond a good idea. Thanks to Principal Maria Kucharski for seeing this as an opportunity to inspire students to live the life of their dreams. And thanks to Laurette Alburg and the rest of the PTA for harnessing the passion of everyone involved and turning it into the nuts and bolts to make it happen.

Family celebrating getting illustration in the book
Family celebrating getting illustration in the book. Below is a young artist displaying her picture of the cupcake boy realizing he is like a greedy little piggy. Pictures like this help inspire new pages in the book and round out the story. (Photo with courtesy and permission from the family.)

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Author: Scott Stoll
Publisher: The Argonauts 
ISBN-13: 978-0982784242
Publication: First edition. © April 11, 2012
Language: English 
Pages: 108

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Scott Stoll

Scott Stoll

My claim to fame is that I rode a bicycle around the world and wrote some books. More about me.

More stories about the making of this book

Stack of 1500 drawings for the new book

The Cupcake Boy Book Project

Pictured here is a stack of about 1500 drawings for our new book “The Cupcake Boy” with Amy Belle Elementary. On top are disco-flavored cupcakes.

Purple and orange cupcakes matching the Cupcake Boy Cover

The Cupcake Boy is here

The Cupcake Boy is the story about a boy who makes the most beautiful and tasty cupcakes in the world; however, the villagers take the boy for granted.

Mission

I explore how to live a more meaningful life.

About Scott Stoll
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