The first draft had one character that identified with a human. I knew the Ethan Goes to School series would be based on my only nephew, Ethan and I knew I wanted the characters to be animals, because even though Ethan is a Downs Syndrome kiddo, I did not want this fact to be the center of the series. So I went with animals, which are relatable characters. Each animal would be dressed in human clothing and ‘do” human things. As the ideas continued to morph in my mind, which is part of the writing process for me-I do my best to paint pictures with words. I decided all the characters should be based on real people, in fact they should be former students of mine. And so the memoir writer emerged, once again.
Quick flashback: as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas, I’d hoped to study composition studies and move beyond my fixation with memoir and creative non-fiction. Maybe I’d broaden the scope of what I’d been writing for the last few years, but the professor I wanted to work with was going to be on sabbatical and I knew I’d need to complete this final degree quickly since being out of the workforce as a forty-something middle class, Midwestern, single woman, was not an option. So I ended up back in the creative writing department studying autobiographical writing, life writing, the great essayists, and writing…an unpublished memoir titled All Skate, Now Reverse for my dissertation.
As my academic career took off at two small, religiously affiliated colleges and I moved through the rigor of writing and presenting at national and international conferences, teaching writing, and writing WRITE on my “To Do” lists, very little creative work was emerging. I shifted to writing about food and studying food, and of course eating while rembereing the draft of Ethan Eats Hot Lunch I’d written ten years earlier—long before heading to graduate school. So, while having drinks with a friend, I chatted with HIS friend an illustrator who drew life-like portraits on styrofoam cups. That night over a Guinness a budding friendship emerged.
Months, maybe years later, I met with Bruce Arant at the Blackstone Corkscrew in Omaha, Nebraska to discuss children’s book publishing and even though he tried to steer me away, we ended up working together and the characters came to life. He had the brilliant idea to use the class photo chart as end pages and out of this idea blossomed the webpage where viewers can click on the character and see them as young students in my elementary classrooms and who they are today. Today’s plan is to add new characters to each book in the series while continuing to include the former students, sort of like how new classes are put together for each new academic year. Reconnecting with former students is my favorite part of these projects, well, I do enjoy writing the words too. So stay tuned as we finish introducing the newest characters in Ethan Goes to Recess on the social media sites and soon we will circle back and introduce you to the OG characters found in Ethan Eats Hot Lunch. Thanks for reading, sharing, and purchasing my work.
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