Fifth-grader Ella Boyer contributes to book by national author

BMS fifth-grader Ella Boyer will have her precept published in a national author's book.

Bay Middle School fifth-grader Ella Boyer will be quoted in an upcoming book by children's author R. J. Palacio. Ella's class recently read the novel "Wonder," about a boy born with facial deformities who goes to school with other children for the first time in the fifth grade. He deals with many challenges, and one of the precepts, or sayings, from the book is, "You can't blend in when you were born to stand out."

The author asked readers, through her website, for help with her next book – "Do you have a WONDER-ful precept that you live by? I'm looking for some original precepts for a new book I'm working on! If you have a unique, or daring, or especially beautiful precept that you'd like to share with the world – this is your chance!"

All the fifth-graders in Mrs. Jill Battershell's class took on the challenge and sent their own precepts to the author on handwritten postcards. Ella's precept, "All you have to do is believe," was selected to appear in Palacio's next book.

These will be Ella's first widely published words, but since she says she would like to be a writer, they probably are the first of many!

Karen Derby

Director of Communications for the Bay Village City School District

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Volume 6, Issue 8, Posted 10:11 AM, 04.15.2014