Is school good for anything, anyway? Lots of people ask that question at least once by the time they grow up and get a job. This is a story of a school assignment that took off!
Part of the Grade Five curriculum where Bethany lives is a unit on publication -- how to write, illustrate and bind a book. In Bethany's class, this was combined with a study of Chinese legends, and the students were asked to write their own Chinese legend, then illustrate it and bind it as a book.
Bethany worked very hard on this assignment, putting in the fruits of lots of practice both drawing and writing stories. She tried to make her story sound as much as she could like the ones in the books they studied. The first draft of The Lotus Princess was the result.
Well, her hard work paid off. Besides an A+, her teacher wrote, "Fantastic. You certainly have a lovely gift of writing and illustrating. Perhaps you could publish this beautiful story?"
At the time, Bethany's Mom, Rebecca, agreed that Bethany's work was amazing, but wasn't sure publishing The Lotus Princess would be possible. As you can see, she was wrong about that!
