GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A Green Bay Notre Dame Academy student has published a children’s book – aiming to promote kindness and address issues around bullying.
Kindness is key for 16-year old Ava Van Straten as she publishes her first children’s book, Mary’s Heart.
“It is about kindness but from a bully’s perspective, and it’s to educate children about the effects that kindness can have on a person’s life,” Van Straten tells WTAQ News, “Hopefully they can either relate or connect to the main character, which is Mary, and kind of look at it in the realms of their own lives and connect it to what they go through at school.”
In the story, Mary feels the physical and emotional impacts of her bullying as opposed to kind choices. Those impacts are shown through a kind plant and a mean plant in her heart, battling for the most space. Mean actions cause the weed to grow, and kind actions cause the kind plant to win.
But publishing a book wasn’t something Ava or her mom, Julie, exactly expected to happen. Especially before her high school graduation.
“I really enjoy writing in school, but I had never thought about writing a book before – but this is definitely a good experience for me,” Ava says.
“If someone would have asked me a few years ago if Ava would be publishing a book, I would have thought that that would have been a bit out of the realm because it’s unusual for a 16 year old to publish a book,” Julie tells WTAQ News, “What’s even more gratifying for us is that she continues to talk about what she can do next and she just has so much empathy in her heart and we just feel so blessed.”
Usually, putting together a book and convincing a company like Ephraim Publishing to accept it can be a daunting task. But for Ava, everything just sort of fell into place.
“It was all very coincidental, it went pretty smoothly. We had people that we knew from prior connections that were willing to help. Our illustrator was a past family friend and this is actually his first children’s book that he’s ever illustrated,” Ava says.
The book was illustrated by Lieutenant Colonel David Jones, the Ethics Chair for Character at West Point Military Academy.
“Knowing Ava and her drive and her ambition – and also how kind she is – it doesn’t surprise me that she’s done this. And it also doesn’t surprise me that she was able to pull off a publisher and an illustrator,” Julie says.
Mary’s Heart was also printed by Worzalla Printing – a company also known for putting out the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.
The book is dedicated to Jeffry Kaftan, who was Van Straten’s grade school principal. Kaftan passed away in 2016.
“In fifth grade, I wrote an essay based on a movement that my principal had started about kindness. And from that, I realize that it could be a children’s book that could help inspire people,” Ava says.
But the book isn’t just something for kids to pass time with – it includes a connected curriculum with different projects and vocabulary words targeting students from 1st-4th grades.
“The book is just the start of it. Once you go further, you can analyze the book and do science projects or art projects that can base it off of the book that make every child feel involved in it and take the story to a whole new level…There’s actually a connected curriculum in the back of the book, and it has different projects and fun activities and even vocab words for different grade levels,” Ava explains, “Because of the recent situation, we haven’t been able to distribute it to schools. But we have an online version that is available, so schools have been looking at it as part of their curriculum. But next school year we are going to distribute it to schools and make it part of their learning.”
Ava even managed to raise enough money to distribute copies of the book and curriculum to area schools for free. Her mom was impressed.
“She fundraised for – she thought to distribute 500 books, and she doubled her goal and she’s distributing over 1000 – and that’s just completely blown me away as a mother,” Julie says.
So how did she find the money to simply donate the books? Ava approached local community members and business owners – asking them if they would be willing to help her out.
“Once you communicate the message and ultimately show with the goal of the book and what it could achieve, many people are willing to help out with it,” Ava says, “Through the fundraising it was really interesting to see how passionate other people were about it, and were willing to help me share my message.”
While Ava is planning on heading to college in fall of 2021, she doesn’t quite have her whole future planned out yet. She isn’t giving up the idea of writing more books. But for now, she just hopes this book can have an impact on other peoples lives going forward.
“I really hope that children can look at this book, and people of all ages, and look at it and enjoy it and think about their own lives and think about the kindness that they could add,” Ava says, “Hopefully it makes people look at kindness and a whole new way and really re evaluate their life and see where they can add in more kindness.”
Mary’s Heart is expected to hit school library shelves this fall.
