The Make-A-Book Project and author-in-residence program school photographs. Pictured here are all four of the aerial-view school photos. Kids standing in the shape of a bicycle, worm, butterfly and cupcake.
A colorful sign with bugs and a voting box and ballots.
The voting station. That's an old coffee can. Kid's could name their favorite bug, like centipede, spider, fly, et cetera.

Name that bug contest

One fun idea to get the students more involved in the production of the book was to have them name the characters in the story. So I, along with my self-appointed fan club, made this ballot box.

Character naming contest student helpers
Above is a polite group of girls naming their favorite bugs. Before them, the table was mobbed with students resulting in a mess of blurry pictures.
Character naming contest ballot box
Character naming contest ballot box. An old coffee can stuffed with over 1000 ballots!

The can was half full within 1.5 hours and by the end of the week, we had hundreds of votes. I think my personal favorite is Honeynester the Bee. We also had dozens of names, such as Worm the Fly and Snail the Butterfly. It’s interesting how the students seem to collectively decide to do such things without any leader.

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More stories about the making of this book

In the studio with Larry Meiller of Wisconsin Public Radio.

Wisconsin Public Radio Interviews #1 & 2

I had another great interview on WPR’s Larry Meiller program. We talked a little about my trip around the world on a bicycle, and a lot about working on the new school book project.

Ruby the Red Worms Dirty Job book cover title screen

Cover Design Challenges

The new book, Ruby the Red Worm, is finally here! Perhaps no one is more surprised how beautiful it is then me, especially the cover!

Book signing celebration

School book signing

The ice cream social and book signing celebration for “Ruby the Red Worm” drew over a 1000 people. It was one of the most overwhelming, amazing and fulfilling moments of my life to see the dreams of so many students coming to life.

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