Creativity Popping Up for High School Writers

Students in senior English at Aliso Continuation High School put their knowledge of storytelling to use in the books with pop-up illustrations they created for their final class project.

On Monday, some of the student authors read their books to eager first-graders at Blythe Street Elementary School, next door to the high school.

The children oohed and aahed as colorful characters popped out at them. They listened carefully as Aliso senior Goldie Steinberg read her book, “The Special Birthday Present.”

“I had a good time reading to the kids,” said Goldie, 17, who wrote about a family of bears. “But a lot of hard work went into writing and illustrating the book.”

Goldie and 22 other seniors created the pop-up books as part of a project required for teacher Sharon Simon’s English class.

“This is a creative way for them to use their practical English skills, rather than writing a boring term paper they can’t have fun with,” said Simon, who has made the books a class project for three years. “I think the hardest part for them was the writing, because I’m so strict.”

The stories had to be approved by Simon before students could start their artwork. For some students, that meant writing and rewriting the story as many as eight times. Still, they were free to choose their story content, which consisted primarily of typical children’s characters: friends, fairies and fuzzy animals.

Some material, however, was not suitable for youngsters. One student wrote a book about a girl and a calf who save a cow from the slaughterhouse--illustrated with gory drawings of blood and dead bovines. Another wrote about a young man’s life in prison.

Illustrations were as diverse as the stories. Some students simply colored the books in crayon, while others used computer images, and felt or other materials.

“The majority of these students come in with poor writing skills, but they leave here knowing so much more,” Simon said. “I don’t want to see them taking remedial English classes in college. I want them to succeed.”