LEFT: Hamilton School Fifth-grader David Dias (seated) displays book in which he appears as character. Standing, from l., are Lisa Ditchkus, his current teacher; Anthonio Campelo, his grandfather; Fernanda Dias, his mother; author Lisa Funari-Willever; and Jamie Gillespie, his fourth-grader teacher last year. RIGHT: The book in which David and family members are included.
HARRISON –
Inside children’s book author Lisa Funari-Willever’s latest book, “T-Bone Takes A Stand for Public Schools,” part of the Nicky Fifth Series, kids from Harrison’s Hamilton School will find a familiar name.
Right there, on page 143, T-Bone and other characters are talking about David Dias, one of their very own classmates, and in subsequent pages, David himself becomes a character and a vital part of the action.
David, a Gifted & Talented fifth-grader who says his favorite subject is math “but second comes reading,” also enjoys soccer and swimming.
Last school year, he and his classmates were assigned to read Funari-Willever’s “Nicky Fifth’s Garden State Adventure” and “our teacher had us write an essay,” said David. “We had to choose a place [in New Jersey) to write about.” They were to be participants in an essay contest sponsored by the Nicky Fifth Foundation that promotes children’s literacy skills. The fourthgraders and their teachers used the book as a springboard for interdisciplinary work in language arts and social studies.
To facilitate the essay prep work, David and his classmates took a field trip to the Newark Museum where he was impressed by what he saw and, in particular, by an extension of the museum space containing the Ballantine House, once the mansion home of the famous brewers, who built it in the late 1800s.
David recalled the place “had a lot of expensive furniture you couldn’t touch, plus all different types of silverware and utensils,” not to mention lots of “children’s bedrooms.”
In his essay, David wrote that he hoped he could take Nicky and T-Bone, the main characters in the book that the class read, to the museum – the largest in the state – “because it has over 80 galleries with different exhibitions in each gallery.
“The museum has a fine collection of American art, decorative art, contemporary art and arts of Asia, Africa, the Americas and ancient worlds,” he wrote. And, David noted, “it has galleries just for children.” And there’s also a planetarium where, he wrote, “you can learn to see the solar system at one time and you can touch and feel things too.”
Sure enough, in Funari-Willever’s newest tome, T-Bone and Nicky accompany David on a visit to the museum where all experience the nuances of the Victorian Era in America.
Back in the real world, the author spent last Tuesday visiting Hamilton School where she shared memories of her childhood, growing up in a Trenton neighborhood where, as a 9-year-old, she enjoyed spending countless hours on summer days, playing outdoors with about “25 kids on our block, except on Sunday” when her dad insisted on bundling everyone into the car “with no air-conditioning” for a “family day” excursion.
Repeated attempts to be excused fell on deaf ears, she said, as every entreaty was met with her pater familias’ persistent reply, “Get in the car.” And off they would go to a distant park populated by a flock of honking geese that attacked her 5-yearold brother everyone in the family called “hard-head” because he refused to drop the slice of bread he was carrying, even going so far, one day, as to jump in the park lake while stubbornly clutching that bread.
These were some of the adventures Funari-Willever went on to chronicle, “blending humor, fact and fiction in real New Jersey locations,” in her books, which now number 24 and counting. She said 30,000 copies of her latest are spread among New Jersey public school classrooms in hopes that young readers will be inspired to be“getting informed and getting involved” in the learning process.
David’s winning essay was culled from among “thousands” of submissions and, in recognition of his effort, he is receiving a $200 Barnes & Noble gift card, a trophy and the entire Nicky Fifth book series. Plus, copies of the author’s newest book will be distributed to every third- , fourth- and fifth-grader at Hamilton School.
