Ruby the Red Worm's Dirty Job
Illustrated by the Waukesha STEM Academy elementary school.

UPDATE: Over a thousand people came to the ice cream social celebration and had their book signed by the student illustrators.

As featured in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

More about this book: This book is full of rich, conceptual drawings, that compliment a story that grew and grew as the students continued to inspire me to write new pages to match their wonderful drawings. It is a particular important book, as it is the first book not about me, but something much more important -- worms! I'm glad to see that being green is a topic that finally has finally reached critical mass in the mainstream consciousness. And Ruby the Red Worm illustrates many subjects from composting and recycling to a passion for living a harmonious life.

"The mission of the STEM Academy is to engage, inspire, and empower a community of learners in thinking, collaborating, innovating, and creating for the future." Therefore this project gave the students the opportunity to apply these principals to their learning and everyday life—literally creating a dream and turning it into a reality. This project also sowed a lot of collateral creations, such as: name-that-bug contest, worm farms, musical theme songs for the characters in the book, the class photo pictured above, illustrator book signing, media exposure, and much more.

Read about the step-by-step creation of this book.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to the 490 students and their parents. Thanks to the staff of the Waukesha STEM Academy; in particular, principal Ryan Krohn for his vision, student resource teacher Kate Krzysik for her magical ability to make things happen, and the art teacher Melissa Nagan for her neverending inspirational smile.

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