Cape Coral 9-year-old writes book for brother suffering from life-threatening illness
Editor's note: This story originally was published in The News-Press Feb. 2, 2014. It was written by reporter Cristela Guerra.
A movement began Tuesday evening. Started by a 9-year-old fourth-grader with a big pink bow, a big laugh and a big heart.
Makenzie Lawrey's mission is to save the life of her personal superhero and little brother, Gavin. She also wants to educate and to raise $1 million by the end of the year to benefit the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. Six-year-old Gavin Lawrey battles daily with an incurable mitochondrial disease.
"She started by asking me questions," said mother, Brandi Lawrey. "She wanted to write a book for families dealing with mito ... to make it not so scary."
His life-threatening disease drains him of sufficient energy to tackle normal everyday tasks and leaves him weak. Among other things this disease causes are seizures nightly.
The News-Press featured the Cape Coral family last April on the front-page in a two-day series called "A Spark of Hope." Starting last summer and for the following six months, Makenzie worked on her book, "Mighty Mito Superhero" to tell the story of her family's struggles.
"I wanted a better way for people to understand mito," Makenzie said.
It was Makenzie's idea to launch a website, hope4mito.com to gather donations.
It was also her idea to feature a short film of her family. In it, Gavin became a blue-green dynamo, his alter-ego and superhero persona Mito Action G who takes seizures away from kids and defeats the evil villain Mito. He coined the name, and it was drawn into reality by local Cape Coral cartoonist Phil Rood. Rood illustrated Makenzie's book. He also sells drawings of Mito Action G and his sidekick service dog, Hershey.
It's taken a loving village to see Makenzie's vision come true from the illustrations, to the book and film, photo shoot and launch party.
"It was great working with this kid and seeing him get excited about the character and the design that we made," Rood wrote on his blog at PhilRood.com. "I drew him as he dictated, right down to the colors used and Hershey the Seizure Dog's jet pack."
Tuesday, lines of friends and family piled into the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers and formed lines to buy the book. Makenzie sat at a table in a gallery filled with paintings and autographed her work. To accomplish Makenzie's goal, the Lawreys asked those present to donate a dollar amount equivalent to their age.
"That represents your life," Brandi Lawrey said with tears in her eyes. "That he may be as lucky as each and every one of you ... to live as long as you have."
Online, her book rose through the Amazon ranks of best-sellers and already started receiving supportive reviews from strangers and loved ones.
"I love the book," Gavin said with a little grin.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Cape Coral girl writes book in effort to help her little brother
