As the expression goes, there is nothing better than a good book; just ask the third-grade students at Kincheloe Elementary.

For the last several months, students in Karen Hardisty’s and Jessica Gray’s classrooms sharpened their pencils — and their imaginations — and got to work creating their own works of written art.

On Wednesday, the budding young authors showed off their finished books to their biggest fans: their parents, grandparents and siblings.

That evening, Kincheloe hosted the school’s first ever Young Writers’ Celebration inside the elementary building cafeteria. Parents and other family members were invited to join the school staff and students as they displayed their laminated books to the public for the first time.

Hardisty and Gray also had a few treats in store for their students that evening, including inviting children’s author Deanna Scelzo, a native of Dowagiac, and illustrator Dan Smith, the former Kincheloe principal. The two volunteered their time to speak with the children, telling them what it is like to work as a professional writer/illustrator and encouraging the students to keep honing their skills in reading and writing.

To close out the evening, the instructors led the students in a writing exercise, asking the children to come up with their own poems.

Hardisty and Gray, who instruct 23 third-grade students each, decided to organize Wednesday’s event as a way to cap off their annual writing program. The students were encouraged to invite their family to the celebration, with more than 200 people packing the gymnasium that evening.

“We are so proud of what they [the students] have accomplished,” Gray said. “We want them to also feel proud of their writing, and to share it with their families.”

The writing program — a longstanding part of the third-grade curriculum — requires students to hone their skills in the written word by creating their own short story, Gray said. 

“Some of the children wrote about bullying Others about space travel,” Gray said. “One of the students listened to his grandparents talk about the Underground Railroad, and wrote the stories in his book.”

Children brought their stories with them to the event to read to their parents Wednesday evening. The best stories, as voted on by the students, were put on display in the back of the gym for family and other classmates to peruse.

The course is designed to give the students a taste of the same writing process that professional authors employ in order to get their works to market, Hardisty said. The children are asked to brainstorm ideas, create rough drafts, have their classmates read their manuscripts, use their classmates’ suggestions to revise their writing and finally polish up their work by cleaning up grammatical mistakes.

“It’s not as simple as writing something then sending it off to get published,” Hardisty said.