Daryl Hyde, a fifth grade teacher at Chelsea Park Elementary School has published his first book.  Frog Level has been downloadable as a Kindle ebook for a little over a year, but only recently has the novel become available in paperback format on Amazon.

Frog Level is about Vickey, an eleven year old girl who has come to realize that her family is broken, and she’s decided she’ll do whatever it takes to fix it.  In turns funny and heartbreaking, Frog Level visits a small southern town in the late 1950’s, where moonshine was commonplace and dynamite caps weren’t so difficult for a little girl to get her hands on.

Daryl began writing the story years ago, after being challenged by a student to write a book.  Now that it’s finished, he reads the story to his fifth grade classes and uses it as the foundation for his writing and reading instruction all year long.

“I write because I have stories that I want to tell,” Daryl says.  “Vickey’s story is a tough one because her parents neglected and mistreated her.  Yet, throughout her childhood, she still managed to find joy.  And I want my students to know that there is always hope, no matter how bad things are.  Also, I want to model for my daughters and my students the entire process of taking an idea and working with it until it’s something I can be proud of.”

Daryl began the process of writing Frog Level by interviewing a co-worker and her family members.  These interviews proved an invaluable resource for story-telling.  So even today, in his classroom, Daryl has his students interview their family members for the purpose of finding a good story to write.

“Putting a book on Kindle was fairly easy,” Daryl says, “and it doesn’t cost anything to do it.”

He added that he’s hoping to put the stories his students write about their families into an ebook so that they can publish their own works on Amazon!

Frog Level is available through Amazon at: http://tinyurl.com/luccun6.

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