As a professional writer for 25 years, Grace Maselli has penned everything from philanthropist features to executive summaries for advisory boards. She’s garnered compliments from CEOs, and praise from audiences when she reads her poetry.
But, her upcoming audience has her a little nervous.
It’s a gathering of elementary school children.
“They’re a tough bunch, man,” Maselli observed.
(Michael Murillo/Staff Photo)
Fortunately, Maselli isn’t bringing a business profile or a PowerPoint presentation. Instead, she’ll read her first children’s book, “Francis and Coco: A Tale of Two Unlikely Friends,” on Nov. 15 at 2 p.m., at the Wilderness Lake Preserve Lodge, 21320 Wilderness Lake Blvd., in Land O’ Lakes.
Like her other nonfiction writing, the story of Francis, the poodle/Pekingese dog, and Coco the guinea pig, is real. They live with Maselli’s two other dogs, her two children and her husband. And, the story takes place in conjunction with their frequent moves before settling in Land O’ Lakes.
And yes, Francis and Coco really are friends.
“Francis will let her scramble all over his body. He’ll roll back. She curls up with him,” Maselli said. “They honestly get along.”
She wanted their story to be both authentic and relatable. Adults will recognize the familiar struggle parents feel when they allow a child to have a new pet, worrying how they’ll assimilate and interact with other pets. And she wants children to see the story as an example of very different beings coexisting and forging a special friendship.
“To me, this is universal because animals accept one another, and they don’t care if you’re a kangaroo or a lion,” Maselli said. “And, I think that, metaphorically, life would be a lot different for us if we didn’t judge people by their surfaces.”
“Francis and Coco” is a story for third-graders, but Maselli didn’t want to limit herself to simple words and phrases. The story contains words like “persistent,” “bluster,” and even “falderal” — which means trivial or nonsensical behavior.
Maselli wanted to tell a story and expose children to bigger words, acclimating them to some elevated language without making it difficult to follow the story. Parents might read the story to them, giving them the experience of hearing the language. If they end up learning new words, she considers that a bonus.
To accommodate the children who will be in attendance, Maselli plans to have assistants holding up the pages as she reads, making it easier to follow along. She wants the auditory experience to be a positive one, and the story easy to follow.
That story begins with Francis as a nervous puppy, and ends with a new friendship when another animal joins the fold. In between, the family disagrees on how things will turn out, and some members come around to the idea of new pets and how they’ll get along together.
Maselli hopes the realistic elements of the story appeals to children and those who might read it to them.
So far, the feedback has been very positive, she said.
In fact, one family member, who has a 2-year-old son, told her that he’s been captivated by the story.
“She sent me a picture of him thumbing through it, and he’s talking about the characters in the book,” Maselli said.
While it’s a different type of writing for her, it wasn’t an easy project.
Much of the story came to her at once, but she put it away for a while before returning to it.
Now that the work is done, she wants to not only entertain young children and teach them about getting along with someone different, but also have something for her teenage children to remember as a memento of a certain point in their lives.
“To me, this is more like something I want to leave for my kids as a gift from me after I’m gone,” Maselli said.
For information about Maselli’s book, visit TatePublishing.com or GraceMaselli.com.
Published November 11, 2015
