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From Imagination to Illustration: Shabazz Art and English Class Turns Kindergarteners into Lead Characters of Their Own Book

From Imagination to Illustration: Shabazz Art and English Class Turns Kindergarteners into Lead Characters of Their Own Book

A special world exists in the pages of a plastic-covered, spiral-bound customized book for a classroom of kindergarten students, a world more magical than any fairytale or thrilling than any comic. Here, kindergarteners aren’t just the readers of stories – they are the main characters, crafted just for them by students at Malcolm Shabazz City High School.

students read a book they wrote and illustrated to a kindergartener.

For almost 30 years, a combined English and art class at Shabazz blends writing, illustration, and mentorship, resulting in personalized books for each kindergarten student, originally at Lakeview Elementary. Shabazz English teacher Colleen Kellogg and Shabazz art teacher Martha Vasquez formed the class in the late 1990s, becoming a model for multidisciplinary and service-based learning. Since both teachers’ retirements, the class continues today under English teacher Laura Counselman Crouch and art teacher Rachel Schramm.

“We discovered that an excited audience of early readers was the best incentive for producing our students' best work,” Kellogg said. “The personalized nature of each book was an incentive for early readers, too. Students use the skills they learn in the classroom to fulfill an authentic need in our community.”

Art teacher Rachel Schramm flips through students' books.

The process begins with high school students visiting a kindergarten class, now at Mendota Elementary, to interview children about their favorite things. The English students then transform these responses into engaging stories tailored to their young audience. Simultaneously, art students bring the narratives to life through illustrations, experimenting with various artistic techniques, from hand-drawn images and watercolor painting to digital art. 

Students in Counselman Crouch’s English class learn how to review their interview notes, filter word choice, creatively wordsmith a story of imagination, and create an impactful moral. After exploring multiple different artistic styles and mediums, Schramm’s students pair up with the writer and work together to decide which elements to illustrate, and how. 

“Artists may have a very creative way they want to go about it, and it may not match what the writer envisions,” Schramm said. “So they have to work together and figure that out, while meeting deadlines and sticking to their end goal of providing a complete book to a student.”

past editions of children's books created by Shabazz students.

The plots are endless when kindergartners get to inspire the stories. Past stories include adventures at a waterpark and gingerbread themed hotel, a friendly spider inhabiting Barbie’s Dream House, a journey with the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” and a comic book for a kindergarten fashionista learning how to dress for the weather. 

The final product is not only a book, but an example on the powerful impact of literacy. Students seeing themselves in the story creates a rare opportunity for specific representation, a depiction of their appearance, personality and a lesson they can take with them even when the cover is closed.

Mendota kindergarten teacher Laura Wocelka said seeing the smiles on her students’ faces when they receive their book is one of the best moments of the process, an excitement that encourages them to read it again and again. Roughly 500 kindergarten students have received their own books since the start of the program, with about 1,000 high school authors and illustrators in its wake

“It is a beautiful thing to be a character in a story and a beautiful thing to cater a story to a particular student's interests,” Counselman Crouch said.” “It's a win-win for all involved.”

page of a children's book created by Shabazz students.