At a time when most children have the laser beam focus on getting gifts from Santa, a group of 60 students at Village Elementary School in Hilton were thinking about stories they could share with children who were spending the holidays at Golisano Children’s Hospital.
Kathleen Neefe, a teacher’s aide, found story starter cards with holiday pictures and they served as her inspiration for the book. She asked students in grades 4-6 if they wanted to write stories in their spare time and received a resounding response. Over 60 writers stepped forward with only a week and a half notice.
“It felt like a good thing to do to help entertain the kids while they were in the hospital during the holidays,” said Brandon Farrell, a sixth grader who wrote a story about the consequences of seeing Santa.
Ethan Hryhorenko, also a sixth grader, wrote several stories because he thought they would help cheer up the patients.
Neefe organized, copied the pages, made a cover and bound the books – 20 in all – and made ornaments and a candy cane with a Grinch poem to accompany each book, then dropped them off at the hospital. “The hospital sent me a picture of a little girl reading the book from cover to cover and said the children loved it,” said Neefe. She plans to put together another holiday book for the young patients next year.
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