Mundelein High authors share books they wrote with young students

Mundelein High School senior Jesica Martinez, 17, loves to illustrate, so she created a story around a Japanese character she called “Chibi.”

Football player Joey Trapani, 17, wrote a children’s story called “Jacked Joe,” which was about a boy who liked to work out a lot.

Jennifer Galindo, 17, also enrolled in the high school creative writing class and focused on her favorite holiday for a children’s story that she titled “Christmas with Timy.”

Recently, the students headed into first-grade classes at Washington Elementary School to share their self-published, bound and illustrated children’s books. The students’ stories and pictures mesmerized the younger audience.

“Before students could share their books, we studied children’s authors,” said MHS teacher Jennifer Franco. “So often, adolescent writing can have a dark theme to it. My goal is to get them to write about subjects that are upbeat and have a hopeful message.”

As part of the Common Core State Standards, it is the Washington teachers’ role to get their first-graders thinking about beginnings, middles and ends to stories, as well as identifying characters and settings in stories, said teacher Liz Henning.

While the young children get to hear from teenagers they admire, the teenagers get to experiment with their themes on a real audience.

“I like writing. In this creative class I get to write about topics I enjoy,” Trapani said.