St. Joseph School's kindergarten teacher, Sheryl Cherney likes to begin her school year with one of her favorite books, “The Kissing Hand.” This transitional book is used as a first day activity. Author, Audrey Penn provides teachers a wonderful tool which is used to make students feel comfortable in their new school environment. Penn’s character, Chester Raccoon shares his fears about his first day of school with his mother. She calms him with a magical kiss, which reminds Chester that her love is always there.

Cherney takes Penn’s writings a step further with an art project, creating a keepsake for students to share with their parents.

Cherney's kindergartners do a lot of reading in class, and she reads to her students every school day. Reading books together helps create young readers. And just as they created an art project for ‘The Kissing Hand,’ many books are followed with projects. These projects, however will soon turn to the creation of their own series of books.

How does one become an author? Audrey Penn explains on her website, audreypenn.com, that her first career was as a ballerina with the National Ballet, New York City Ballet, and Stuttgart Ballet. She talks of how she was also a choreographer for a U.S. Figure Skating Team. However an illness prevented her from continuing in this field. She said she had done a lot of children’s theater and has always enjoyed children’s literature, so she turned to writing children’s books for her creative outlet. Her writing career, as she explained, actually began in her fourth grade through journaling. On her website, she talks about how these journals helped create her first book, “Happy Apple Told Me.” Thankfully her success in writing continues today as she provides many creative stories to share.

In her teaching years at St. Joseph School, Cherney has found that one of the favorite kindergarten activities has been creating books with her students. In the coming months, she will create young authors in her students as she provides each child an opportunity to create a themed page, which when combined with their classmates creations becomes one in a series of new classroom books made available for checkout in their own class library.

“These books are popular! They see a lot of mileage as they are often carried back and forth from school to home”, said Cherney. “The children love to share their work with friends and family.”

Whether it begins in kindergarten or fourth grade, anyone can become a writer. As Penn states on her website, "Now, it's your turn to keep a journal!"