Elementary students lauded for published book
Sixteen Kildeer Countryside Elementary School fourth-graders can tout an accomplishment that even grown adults often can't achieve.
The team of students at the Long Grove school authored a book that is being published nationwide by Scholastic as part of its "Kids are Authors" contest.
Besides writing the book "A Day on the Prairie" last year as third-graders, the group also illustrated each page.
"This is a huge day for Kildeer school," said Principal Heather Friziellie at an assembly Friday to honor the students. "I couldn't be more proud of you."
The book will be on sale at 100,000 schools through the country at Scholastic book fairs.
The 16 authors are: Maddie Wilhem, Aidan O'Connell, Grayson Mick, Sarah Pentek, Caroline Hartwell, Dylan Irlbeck, Jahnavi Kishore, Abby Speck, Ilana Kopelman, Melanie Blake, Hannah Petrich, Madison Randol, Aki Dhadda, Morghan Murphy, Alaina Errico and Mazzy Teich.
The kids said they had to brainstorm ideas on what they wanted to write about and that they visited a prairie to get a feel for the subject matter. They put together the ideas with the help of Amy VandenBerge and Marilee Sarlitto, their teachers at school.
They learned so many facts about prairies that they were eager to pass them along.
Esther Hershenhorn, a children's author, commended the students on their work during the school assembly.
"You did everything so right," she said. "You chose the best words."
The students, in fact, dedicated the book to the thesaurus because they spent so much time tweaking their writing and finding just the right words.
Gordon Korman, an author whose notes on the book are included on its front cover, called the book "nearly flawless in art, language, construction, and balance. I'm blown away."
Other authors who judged the book also touted it as being poetic.
Carolyn Longest, who runs the contest for Scholastic, said the Kildeer book was brought to her attention right away after the contest closed on March 15 last year.
"It was breathtaking in its simplicity," she said.
She said thousands of classes from every state submitted something for the contest. The judges pared down the entries through several judgings and chose 28 finalists. The remaining 25 were given honorable mentions - including another Kildeer book called "The Crazy Oops Day," written by first-graders.
"A Day on the Prairie" was the nonfiction winner of the year. That brought in $5,000 for the school to spend on Scholastic books. The fiction prize went to "Little Prickles," written by seventh-graders at the Montessori Middle School in Norwalk, Conn. A third category added this year for an environmental book was won by kindergarten students at Oak Park Elementary School in Bartlesville, Okla.