Published: October 20, 2008 01:11 am      

Turned into characters

MOUNT SAVAGE — What started out as a simple letter to an author turned into something bigger — much bigger.

Lisa Watson and 13 of her first-grade students at Mount Savage School wrote to best-selling children’s author Robert Munsch. All the students signed their names to the letter and asked questions about how Munsch became an author, his favorite book and if he’d ever come visit their school.

They didn’t expect to become characters in his book. But that’s exactly what happened.

Just a few weeks after the children sent the letter to Munsch, he responded in early October with a brand-new “book” in which Watson takes her class for a walk and they come “to a man sitting on a park bench holding a picture book,” the story reads.

When the man tells the students he can’t think of a kid to use in the story, the character Abby, played by 6-year-old Abby McLaughlin, asks the writer if she can play a part.

Abby should have known there’d be a catch. After all, each of Munsch’s other books has “crazy stuff,” she said.

So the writer “picked up Abby, folded her and flattened her and stuck her into the book.”

Watson, according to the story line, thought it was “a great honor” to be in a book. Abby wasn’t so sure. And she wanted out.

On Thursday, Abby recalled the rest of the story and how her classmates tried to help her out of the book.

Dayna tried to use her fingernails to pry her friend out. That didn’t work, so Levi, Logan, Jordyn and Geoff tried to pull the book apart. Then her friend and classmate Aidan tried to photocopy her out of the book, but “I was still in the book. He only copied a picture of me.”

“They standed on me, they sitted on me (and) it doesn’t work,” Abby said Thursday.

Then classmate Caleb Carney, 6, came to the rescue.

“I change the ending,” he said. “I put the writer in the book.”

And then, according to the story, the book became one of the most popular books in all the school library as it was the only one that jumped up and down shouting “Help! Help! Help!”

Caleb might have had an advantage over the writer of the book because his 14-year-old sister, A.J., is writing her own book at home.

“It’s not published, but my sister’s making it,” Caleb said.

Watson told the Times-News another Mount Savage teacher had her students write to Munsch and received a quick reply. Because of the success her students experienced, they’d surely write him again, Watson said.

The book is not available at any bookstore. In an e-mail, Munsch said the story is a template and is used for many classes that write to him.

Watson said studying the many books by Munsch is part of a series of author studies. Another author they’re learning about is Michael Thaler.

So that’s the story of how Abby, Dayna, Levi, Logan, Jordyn, Geoff, Shaelyn, Aidan, MacKenzie, Jeremiah, Selena, Adam and Caleb made their way into a book written by Robert Munsch.

And now they’ve made their way into the newspaper.

Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.