Bend’s Sky View Middle School students create children’s books to read to Lava Ridge Elementary students

(Update: Adding video, comments from students, language arts teacher)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- A Bend middle school has added a new creative writing elective. In just its first year, the class at Sky View Middle School has students creating books for younger kids, and they'll be reading them to youngsters soon. 

"We're just kind of playing it by ear, let the kids kind of guide what we do," language arts teacher Brian Seguin said Friday. "We just got done with some poetry books, and we decided to write a children's book."

The books from middle schoolers will be read to the first- and second-graders at Lava Ridge Elementary School. 

 At Sky View, 21 students signed up for the elective, three seventh-graders and 18 eighth-graders. The young writers illustrate their books on iPads, using the free app, Book Creator.

Eighth-grader K.C. Covert said, "My book is about a girl who is friends with the cat and mouse of me and the mouse. It's basically just the conflict between the mouse and the cat. They don't really understand that cats try to play mouses, and that's bigger."

Eighth-grader Maddy O'Leary talked about her book.

"This is like the beginning of the story. He has to wake up, and it's his first day in school, with a lot of new friends. He has a talk with his mom. She's telling him to just be himself, so then he can fit in."

Once the books are finished, students will practice telling their stories to the elementary students.

I asked O'Leary how she plans to read her book to the children.

She said, "I hope to be really enthusiastic about it and stuff, and like to match kind of the emotions that the story's going with."

Premier Printing Solutions will be donating resources to print the books, covering the production cost.

Seguin said, "I really didn't want to go over to Lava Ridge and have them just show the kids through the iPads, as you've been watching them scroll -- they watch enough screen time. I really wanted them to go over there with the concrete book."

The Sky View students will head over to Lava Ridge on the 25th to read their books to the first- and second-graders.