Two Reuben Elem. students have book published statewide

NEWBERRY — On Friday, March 22, two fifth graders at Reuben Elementary School were recognized by the Newberry Electric Cooperative for writing and illustrating the best book and winning the the2024 enLIGHTenSC Children’s Book Challenge.

Students Ali Chapman and Harper Rowe, with the help from their teacher Kevin Boozer, co-authored the book “Phoenix and the Town Power Outage,” a book that won at the local and state level. The enLIGHTenSC Children’s Book Challenge invites fourth and fifth graders across the state to write and illustrate a book about electric cooperatives and what they do, helping educate readers and the authors.

“They won first for our district, so that means that we competed at this school and won best book and then the two of them as co-authors for the best book in our entire school district,” said Boozer.

“Phoenix and the Town Power Outage” follows Phoenix, an electric cooperative employee, as she works to figure out the source of her town’s power outage and restore it. In the book, Phoenix stops at several locations vital to providing electricity, like the power plant, power lines and transformers, shedding light on how power outages are fixed. Chapman’s and Rowe’s book shed light on how power outages are solved and the different methods taken to solve power outages, the fifth grader’s story focusing on what happens when the power lines are frozen.

The two authors explained how the book was originally going to be about students at the science fair, but they struggled to fit this year’s theme, “How we provide electricity to our communities.” They chose to change the story to what it is now during their storyboarding process.

“We got a piece of paper and drew squares and put the scenes of the book in the squares and copied it into our book,” Chapman explained, laying out their storyboarding and writing process. “So we rough drafted and fixed words on the storyboard and it helped us organize the story.”

The co-authors said their favorite part of writing the book was being able to work together on the research they put into the story and what electric cooperatives do. It was the research that allowed them to include small details and focus on the issue of frozen power lines.

“It was fun working together so we didn’t have to do it by ourselves,” said Rowe. “We had a bunch of different websites to figure out how power was delivered to our homes and neighborhoods.”

The enLIGHTenSC Children’s Book Challenge has been held for the last seven years, but this year they received the highest number of votes for the books, according to Carolina Robinson, an enLIGHTenSC representative. After reading their book to the school, they were congratulated and recognized for their work.

“You ladies nailed it. I really loved reading how Phoenix went out in the community to make sure everybody’s power was back on,” Robinson said. “And thank you for highlighting what Newberry Electric Co-op does for our communities, that was a nice touch.”

For winning the book challenge, Chapman and Rowe were awarded $250 each and Kevin Boozer was awarded $100. Their book will also be printed and sent to schools statewide to help educate other students on what an electric cooperative is. Finally, Rowe, Chapman and Boozer are going to be invited by the South Carolina House of Representatives and Senate to be honored for their hard work and to congratulate them on becoming published authors.

“We’re gonna plan a day for you and Mr. Boozer to Columbia and meet our house and senate members because they want to honor and thank you for what you’ve done,” said Robinson.