By Norma Dittman
Fulda Free Press staff writer
Students at Fulda Elementary School had the opportunity to meet professional author, illustrator, and storyteller, Julia Cook, on Friday, March 24th. Cook held four sessions throughout the day, meeting with the students to encourage the love of reading, and to inspire students to write and illustrate. She told the students that they were at a wonderful age because they had big imaginations and could use that imagination to achieve so many different things.
Cook shared her personal adventure on becoming an author and illustrator, saying, “I was a school counselor. Eleven years ago, tattling in the school I was at had become a huge problem. As adults, we can talk to children your age about tattling, but its going to go in and right out of your brain. It’s always better when you read it. You can get it in your head that way. To help with the tattling issue, I looked for a book on tattling and couldn’t find one. So I wrote one with four rules about tattling. And do you know what? It worked. The tattling got so much better that a co-worker said, ‘Julia, you should do something with your book, because it has certainly improved the tattling issue here.’ I opened one of the children’s books that I kept in my office and looked at the publisher’s page. Then I overnighted my book to that publisher on Monday. They called me on Wednesday and wanted to publish my book and asked if I had any more. I asked what it was going to cost me to get the book published and they said, ‘We’re going to pay you!’ I now have 81 children’s books that I have written.”
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