Students at Springfield’s Westport School have some new writing skills after a recent author visit. Jarrett Lerner of Massachusetts conducted workshops with small groups of students and talked to large numbers of students at assemblies.
Lerner shared the three most important parts of a story as he walked seventh and eighth graders through the writing process. Together, they began writing a story about a taco named Jack.
Lerner has written more than a dozen books for kids, including “A Work in Progress,” which is popular with fourth through eighth grade students. It tells the story of Will, a boy who struggles with the way he looks.
Lerner said it’s a book he wished he’d had when he was young.
"The book is a fictionalization of my own experience going through all of what my protagonist experiences," he said, "and it took me until I was an adult to really learn how common these things are and how detrimental they can be. And I believe if I was exposed to other people's stories like this book is, I would have asked for help. I would have gotten better way sooner than I did."
He hopes his book will prevent kids from suffering the way he did. And he hopes kids who aren’t struggling with body image will be more sensitive to those who are and maybe even reach out and support them.
Lerner said he visits schools to encourage kids to use their voices and become more interested in reading and writing. And he said he visits because he never had the chance to meet an author when he was in school.
"I didn't meet other living, published authors until I was in my 20s and 30s. Growing up, because of the books that I was given as a kid, I internalized this idea, and I think a lot of people did that, to be an author you had to be an old, dead, white guy," he said. "And I think that if I had met an author when I was in fourth grade, fifth grade, middle school, I would have allowed myself to believe that I could pursue this as a career way earlier than I did."
