Of Mice and Storybooks: Children's book author Messner releases 4th book in 'Fergus and Zeke' series
Dec. 18—PLATTSBURGH — Author Kate Messner penned her numerically fun latest release, "Fergus and Zeke and the 100th Day of School," in early 2019.
"Books that are illustrated take a little while," the Plattsburgh author said.
"You have to do all of your work as the author. You finish all your revisions as an author, and you work on the book with your editor and make more changes.
"Then, you hand it off to the illustrator, who also has a huge job to do."
VERY SHORT CHAPTERS
Heather Ross is the series' illustrator for the exploits of the mice inside and outside Miss Maxwell's classroom.
"She does an amazing job, but she has to create all these pieces of art work so that takes some time to do," Messner said.
This is the fourth book in the Fergus and Zeke easy reader series.
"These are books that are really popular with kids who are just learning to read on their own and are ready for very short chapters," she said.
"So we are talking first grade to fourth grade for the most part. We get some precocious kindergartners and some older readers as well."
STORY IDEAS
Messner works with her publisher, Candlewick Press, to figure out what engages kids in that age group and what they get excited about.
The first book in the series, "Fergus and Zeke," was about a school field trip to the Museum of Natural History.
"Think dinosaurs and planetarium and butterfly enclosures," she said.
"The second book in the series is about school science fair where these two classroom mice, Fergus and Zeke, want to do their own project.
"For the third book, we did 'Fergus and Zeke and the Field Day Challenge.' It's all about a school field day — the tug-o-war, high jump and parachute game that kids play."
The protagonists are very excited about the event until they realized all the activities and challenges and games were people-sized.
"It's not really practical for mice to participate in a lot of those things, so they have to come up with their own field day activities," she said.
"So in coming up with this topic for the fourth book, I was brainstorming more things that kids get excited about."
Messner and her editor had talked about a number of ideas including holidays and possible adventures that a class might take from school.
"One of the things that we kept coming around to is the 100th day of school because it's something that kids look forward to, and they do a lot of projects," she said.
"A lot of teachers and librarians do curriculum projects — everything from mathematics to art to physical ed — it ties together with these 100th day of school projects. We thought that might be a really fun tie in and something to explore in Fergus and Zeke's world as well."
AUTHOR READING
On her YouTube channel, Messner recently posted an Author Read-Aloud excerpt from the book.
The video can be seen at tinyurl.com/2p9xzby4.
"I did one of the chapters," she said.
"One of the chapters, Fergus and Zeke are trying to figure out what they can do for their 100th day of school project. One of the ideas is that they write a story with exactly 100 words. "The classroom is doing this activity, and kids are writing their stories about dragons and astronauts and bears and things."
Zeke volunteers to write the story, and Fergus is the illustrator.
"He gets going on a story where a mouse named Fergus is being chased by a monster," she said.
"He runs and runs. Fergus is not thrilled about being the pursued in the story. He runs and runs, and Zeke gets to a very suspenseful part of the story where a giant monster has grasped this poor mouse Fergus in his claws and ..."
And is the 100th word.
"So, we never get to know how the story ends," Messner said.
"I decided to do that chapter as a Read-Aloud to share because I know that a lot of classrooms and libraries will be doing 100th day of school projects with kids. That's a really fun activity that kids can try to do, too."
Students will learn how to storyboard, plot, revise, and edit while creating their own 100-word stories.
"To tighten them up, when your story is maybe 110 words instead," Messner said.
"Those are all great activities. I have had a lot of teachers interested in that and are planning to read the book on the 100th day of school, and then have the kids do this 100 word activity as well."
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Twitter:@RobinCaudell
