Saturday, July 13, 2013

Guest Author: Ernestine Dail

What Inspired Me to Write My Book

What will I do with kindergarten and elementary students for two hours? What fun activities do they like? I’m a middle and high school educator.  These are questions that I asked myself when it was my time to do aftercare in school once a week. My job was to have a club that would engage the students in their creativity and make it fun. I really had to research and find different activities that I thought they liked. First, we watched educational cartoons, but I noticed that some were more interested in talking with their neighbors than watching the movie. Next, we played different games and I discovered that everyone did not like to share. Then I tried a sing-a-long that went well, but we couldn’t sing for two hours. Finally, since I like to read, I decided to have reading and acting activities supposing that I would read the story while the students acted it out. It didn’t quite work out that way. What a surprise! One student, a kindergartener, asked to read one of the books and act it out. Since I teach middle and high, I didn’t think that he could read well enough to hold the other student’s interest. Nevertheless, I thought that it would be interesting to listen to his reading skills and to my amazement, he was an excellent reader who read with expression, enunciated his words, and demonstrated that he really enjoyed the story by participating in it. At that moment, I decided that I would write children books.  From this experience, Dimples DoGood was written followed by A Voice in the Night. A Voice in the Night was also inspired by high school students. They read Dimples DoGood and suggested that I write a mystery A Voice in the Night because that is their favorite genre.

Three boys alone at Blackstone Cabin find themselves in the midst of a violent storm and a hooded stranger frantically knocking at their door. Will they be rescued from the danger lurking outside?

Will they reach their goals in life? A Voice in the Night teaches children as well as adults morals and character.

A Voice in the Night

Author: Ernestine Dail
Paperback: 46 pages
Publisher: Avid Readers Publishing Group (April 11, 2012)
Amazon Link / Barnes and Noble

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