Schools

Children's Author Encourages New Jersey Studies

Author Lisa Funari Willever visits Lanoka Harbor Elementary School

Your child may come home with a new dream today. Almost all of the students at raised their hands when asked if they want to become writers after an assembly with author Lisa Funari Willever.

Many of Willever’s books promote New Jersey. She has worked with the state including Travel and Tourism and she is currently working with the state government. Senator Thomas Goodwin (R-14) sponsored a bill to name two of her characters, Nicky and T-Bone, as Official Junior Ambassadors.

“Instead of going to overscheduled exhausted parents, we’re targeting kids because kids have to learn about New Jersey anyways,” Willever said. “If you have this captive audience, don’t just teach them about New Jersey, promote the state while you teach them. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

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It’s because of this mindset that many New Jersey schools have adopted Willever’s books as a part of their curriculum using them to cover both literature and New Jersey studies.

"The Nicky Fifth series has served to raise awareness among thousands of New Jersey children about the often overlooked places of historical, cultural, and recreational significance in their home state," Goodwin said in State Resolution No. 84.

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The Nicky Fifth series is set in New Jersey, with the purpose of encouraging kids to get out and see the state. She writes these books to bring New Jersey to life, she said.

"Nicky Fifth’s Passport to the Garden State" features two characters, Nicky and T-Bone, who serve as Unofficial Junior Ambassadors. Nicky and T-Bone travel to places throughout New Jersey and readers can follow their itinerary and have their very own passport stamped in the back of the book.

“[The books] get the children invested in the characters. I think there’s something special when it’s a real place, that you can actually share the experience with the character that you’re really invested in,” Willever said.

School materials available on New Jersey education are dry, boring, and no longer relevant, Willever said. As a former teacher, teaching students the number of counties in the state is not enough. Willever wants kids to see each county and know what they have to offer, she said.

“We’re trying to really get kids to know about the state and appreciate it because we’ve got a generation of parents who know very little about the state, raising a generation of kids who know nothing about the state and they’re going to be in charge,” Willever said. “It’s scary if they’re going to be in charge and they don’t know anything about it.”

Willever sees the small size of New Jersey as its biggest asset, enabling day trips. But there is a disconnect where many people just stay within the boundaries of their own backyard rather than venturing out and experiencing all the state has to offer, Willever said.

Willever writes books for children in kindergarten to grade eight and many of them originate from real life experiences. They are a fusion of fact, fiction, and humor, she said.

“In the chapter books, there’s a lot more freedom to add so many personal things that kids, when they read them, have no idea that that’s my life. Things that happen to those characters, many of them are more real then not real,” Willever said.

"Everybody Moos at Cows" was based on Willever's "Sunday Family Days" growing up, when her family would take road trips.

She now takes her own family on road trips to not only experience the state but to prepare for future books.

Last summer, Willever slept, ate, and breathed the Jersey Shore as she visited every beach and boardwalk and ate every pizza and funnel cake to write "Nicky Fifth at the Jersey Shore," which will be published in Spring 2010.

Some of Willever’s brainstorming has taken place on napkins in Friendly’s. "The Easter Chicken" was developed as she sat in Friendly’s with her Mom with napkins sprawled across the table, Willever said.

Willever grew up in Trenton, New Jersey and graduated with a degree in Elementary Education and Sociology from Trenton State College, now known as The College of New Jersey. She was hired as a second grade teacher in 1992 and taught for eight years. After seven years and 63 rejection letters, she was finally offered a contract for The Culprit Was a Fly in 1997.

She is an award winning author winning the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award for Children’s Picture Book for A Glove of their Own; Foreword Magazine’s 2009 Book of the Year Award for There’s A Kid Under My Bed; and many more.


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