Orrville Teacher Debuts Children’s Book

  • By Lisa Amstutz
  • December 28, 2011
  • 336
                        
Summary: Local author Tammi Booth, writing as TC Booth, recently published her first children’s book, The Time Travel Storm. Booth, a teacher at Orrville Elementary School, said she based the story on the personalities and interests of her third-grade class. Main article: A local author credits her third-grade class with providing the inspiration for her new children’s book, The Time Travel Storm. Tammi Booth, writing as TC Booth, has been teaching elementary school in Orrville for the past fifteen years. “We have a hobby day every year, where the kids share about one of their hobbies with the class,” Booth said. “One of my hobbies is writing, so last year I wrote a story and shared it on hobby day.” To make the story more appealing to her students, she wove in some of their personalities and interests. The Magic Tree House books were popular with the kids, Booth said, so she chose a similar time travel theme. Some popular classroom activities made it into the story as well. For example, “one of their favorite things to do in class is to rap multiplication facts, so I added that to the story,” she said. “It’s one of the kids’ favorite parts of the story.” In The Time Travel Storm, a third-grade class takes a trip to The Sunnyview Historical Village. Protagonists Alex and Scott get separated from their class during a thunderstorm and find themselves in a one-room schoolhouse in the 1800’s. As they try to find their way back to their own time period, they learn about school in the colonial times and teach the colonial children what modern schools are like. Last year's third graders were very excited about the story when Booth shared it on hobby day. “They started writing stories like crazy after that,” she said. This year’s class is equally excited about seeing the book in print. The Time Travel Storm is classified as an early reader and is written at a third-grade reading level with lots of full-page, color illustrations. “After working with children this age for so many years, I knew how to keep the vocabulary appropriate for them. I also knew their attention span and knew when to end it,” Booth said. Booth plans to develop a teaching unit based around her book that will be available free of charge on her website at www.wix.com/tboot7/tcbooth. She also plans to write further adventures of Alex and Scott using secondary characters based on this year’s third-grade class, and to turn the book into a series. The 24-page book was illustrated by Juan Carlos Colla and published by Mirror Publishing, based in Milwaukee, WI. “It was really a learning experience for me,” Booth said. “I was so excited to see the final product—the whole process took about six months.” Booth’s advice to aspiring authors is just to keep writing and not to give up if you don’t find success right away. While this is the first of her books to appear in print, Booth has been writing for years. “I started writing poetry in third grade,” she said. “I have a lot of stories I’ve never done anything with. My goal last summer was to do something with one of my stories. Since the kids had such a positive reaction to this one, I decided to submit it.” A previous book, a young adult novella titled Mystified, is also available in e-book form on Amazon.com. The novella was loosely based on her daughter and friends, Booth said. She is currently writing one for her youngest daughter. The Time Travel Storm by TC Booth is available online at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and Mirror Publishing (www.pagesofwonder.com) or directly from the author. For more information, visit her website at www.wix.com/tboot7/tcbooth.


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