Babes in Book Land : Education: Sixth-graders and kindergartners at Telfair Avenue School in Pacoima pair up to write works based on the younger children’s experiences.

Steve Aquirre and Ramiro Esqueda were on deadline Tuesday, putting the finishing touches on a remake of the Cain and Abel story due at the publisher’s next week.

Of course, they have put their own spin on the oft-told Bible story: The warring brothers settle their differences and live happily ever after in Pacoima.

Pacoima? Well, like their colleagues in the TV biz, the two authors admit lifting much of their material from real life. For starters, “my brother is always picking on me,” said Steve, a 6-year-old kindergartner.

Steve and Ramiro are only two of several dozen soon-to-be-published authors at Telfair Avenue School in Pacoima. Teachers at the elementary school have paired sixth-graders and kindergartners to collaborate on illustrated novels in English and Spanish that will be bound by a publishing house.

The money for the binding, which costs $800 for 90 copies, is raised through donations.

This fall, the sixth-grade students spent several days talking with their kindergarten partners. They then used information from the interviews to write stories revolving around problems and situations in the lives of the younger children.

When the school year ends in June, each student will take home a copy of his bound book, which will feature a back-page photograph of the authors--after the traditional author’s party, that is.

“The value is the focus on literature,” said Barbara Blakley, one of the teachers working on the publishing project. “Plus, the students end up being published and take home books that they wrote. It’s just like when I got my master’s thesis bound. I was so proud, I showed it to everyone.”

Having students write stories is a practice as old as chalk and slate. But having the stories published is a new twist on the age-old problem of getting students to overcome their fear of the blank page, school librarian Ellen Nathan said.

The project is in its second year at Telfair, a school the serves a predominantly blue-collar Latino neighborhood near the intersection of the Golden State and Simi Valley freeways.

Nathan, who keeps a copy of the student books in the school’s library, brought the idea to Telfair on the heels of a movement among grade-school educators to replace primers with simple literature. Educators supporting the change say youngsters do better in reading and writing when they first learn to appreciate a good story.

The stories written by the Telfair students are a mix of the parochial and the worldly.

In one story, the film character, RoboCop--half man, half machine--helps a youngster arrest gang members who spread graffiti through the neighborhood and then assists the boy in fending off a Martian invasion of the school.

In another story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character Michelangelo helps kindergartner Jose Banda with his homework problems.

“Michelangelo gives Jose his phone number, 33-NINJA, so he can call him any time he has problems with his homework,” said Jose Jimenez, 12, the sixth-grader who co-wrote the story. “He learns that homework is fun.”

The sixth-grade students think up their stories based on the real-life problems of their kindergarten partners, which range from sibling squabbles to the story published last year of “The Kid Who Couldn’t Make a Basket.”

The students all say the project, which they have been working on since fall, has been fun. Sixth-grader Ramiro described it as big kids helping little kids.

For a school fighting its way out of the bottom of the test-score heap, that attitude is a good start, Telfair teachers say. For the past several years, third- and sixth-grade students at Telfair have scored well below district and state averages on the California Assessment Program tests in reading, writing and math.

“Some of the students from more rural parts of Mexico don’t have any books at home,” Blakley said.

Come June, there will be at least one volume.